But in most of the great nature poems, nature is just setting for the true subject of the poem: people and how they react to nature. That's why I can hardly force myself to read most of the English Romantics but can deeply appreciate a collection like Seamus Heaney's "Death of a Naturalist." (Also because I bear a deep antipathy towards naturalists.)
While he has obviously spent a lot of time outdoors, dealing with the natural world of trees and animals and birds and weather, what really intrigues him is what his observation of these phenomena says about him and therefore people in general. In that spirit I present this...
One observes them, one expects them,
Blue-breasted in their indifferent mortuary,
Beached bare on the cold marble slabs
In immodest underwear frills of feather.
The red sides of beef retain
Some of the smelly majesty of living:
A half-cow slung from a hood maintains
That blood and flesh are not ignored.
But a turkey cowers in death.
Pull his neck, pluck him, and look -
He is just another poor forked thing,
A skin-bag plumped with inky putty.
He once complained extravagantly
In an overture of gobbles;
He lorded it on the claw-flecked mud
With a grey flick of his Confucian eye.
Now, as I pass the bleak Christmas dazzle,
I find him ranged with his cold squadrons:
The fuselage is bare, the proud wings snapped,
The tail-fan stripped down to a shameful rudder.
You'll notice that it's not even called "Turkeys" but "Turkeys Observed." The observation of them is more honestly the thing which piques his interest.
One more point of interest: I found what is most likely an alternate version online which I'll reproduce here:
One observes them, one expects them,
Blue breasted in their indifferent mortuary,
Beached end bare on the cold marble slabs
In immodest underwear frills of feather.
The red sides of beef retain
Some of the smelly majesty of living:
A half-cow slung from a hood maintains
That blood and flesh are not ignored.
But a turkey cowers in death.
Pull his neck, pluck him, and look -
He is just another poor forked thing,
An ink-blotch,y slump of putty.
He once complained extravagantly
In an overture of gobbles;
He lorded it on the claw-flecked mud
With a grey flick of his cConfucian eye.
Now, in my winter woolens and turned up collar,
I pass the butcher's bleak December dazzle
And casually note the importance
Of plumage and perpindicularity.
The final stanza is much stronger in the finished version: almost as though in his rough draft he didn't quite know how to stick the landing. "Plumage and perpendicularity"? Maybe Robert Frost or Wallace Stevens could get away with that, but it sounds forced for Heaney. I much prefer the analogy of living birds to metal airplanes, the industrial means we have used to promote ourselves over the biological flying creatures.
Also, for the record, "An ink-blotchy slump of putty" has a funny Lewis Carroll ring to it, but I want this inscribed on my headstone: "He died as he lived: a skin-bag plumped with inky putty."
Turkeys Observed
Seamus Heaney
Blue-breasted in their indifferent mortuary,
Beached bare on the cold marble slabs
In immodest underwear frills of feather.
The red sides of beef retain
Some of the smelly majesty of living:
A half-cow slung from a hood maintains
That blood and flesh are not ignored.
But a turkey cowers in death.
Pull his neck, pluck him, and look -
He is just another poor forked thing,
A skin-bag plumped with inky putty.
He once complained extravagantly
In an overture of gobbles;
He lorded it on the claw-flecked mud
With a grey flick of his Confucian eye.
Now, as I pass the bleak Christmas dazzle,
I find him ranged with his cold squadrons:
The fuselage is bare, the proud wings snapped,
The tail-fan stripped down to a shameful rudder.
You'll notice that it's not even called "Turkeys" but "Turkeys Observed." The observation of them is more honestly the thing which piques his interest.
One more point of interest: I found what is most likely an alternate version online which I'll reproduce here:
Turkeys Observed
Seamus Heaney
Blue breasted in their indifferent mortuary,
Beached end bare on the cold marble slabs
In immodest underwear frills of feather.
The red sides of beef retain
Some of the smelly majesty of living:
A half-cow slung from a hood maintains
That blood and flesh are not ignored.
But a turkey cowers in death.
Pull his neck, pluck him, and look -
He is just another poor forked thing,
An ink-blotch,y slump of putty.
He once complained extravagantly
In an overture of gobbles;
He lorded it on the claw-flecked mud
With a grey flick of his cConfucian eye.
Now, in my winter woolens and turned up collar,
I pass the butcher's bleak December dazzle
And casually note the importance
Of plumage and perpindicularity.
The final stanza is much stronger in the finished version: almost as though in his rough draft he didn't quite know how to stick the landing. "Plumage and perpendicularity"? Maybe Robert Frost or Wallace Stevens could get away with that, but it sounds forced for Heaney. I much prefer the analogy of living birds to metal airplanes, the industrial means we have used to promote ourselves over the biological flying creatures.
Also, for the record, "An ink-blotchy slump of putty" has a funny Lewis Carroll ring to it, but I want this inscribed on my headstone: "He died as he lived: a skin-bag plumped with inky putty."
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