Seamus Heaney with Willie & Michael Moran

The Hall Of Fame

SEAMUS HEANEY

SEAMUS HEANEY is a regular visitor to Morans and has been coming for many years for seafood long before it was fashionable to do so.

POEM TITLED OYSTERS

The poem 'OYSTERS' was written about the experience of eating oysters 'in the cool of thatch and crockery'. Willie Moran requested permission to have the poem typed so that it could be framed for display within Morans. Seamus was delighted with the request and took the trouble to hand-write the poem which takes pride of place in the bar.

Our shells clacked on the plates.
My tongue was a filling estuary,
My palate hung with starlight:
As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into the water.

Alive and violated,
They lay on their bed of ice:
Bivalves: the split bulb
And philandering sigh of ocean
Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.

We had driven to that coast
Through flowers and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying down a perfect memory
In the cool of thatch and crockery.

Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled their oysters south of Rome:
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The frond-lipped, brine-stung
Glut of privilege

And was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from sea. I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.

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