Day 3: Glitter-Drizzle

Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney is a master at crafting words. One of my favourite poets, I am particularly in awe of his ability to create the greatest sound effects in his poems. 

Because it's raining today (for the past week actually), I chose 'The Rain Stick' as my poem today. Because rain can be quite magical as Heaney shows us in this poem. Note the sound effects. You can almost hear the rain, the sluice-rush and sprinkle of it. What this poet  does brilliantly is create words of his own to capture a feeling, a sound, a sensation, like 'diminuendo' and 'glitter-drizzle.'

Fed up with the rain? A rain stick would be a good prop, but no matter. Look and listen to it again. This time, through the eyes and ears of a someone who sees it as wonder.

The Rain Stick  - Seamus Heaney

Up-end the stick and what happens next

is a music that you never would have known

to listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash

come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe

being played by water, you shake it again lightly

and diminuendo runs through all its scales

like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes

a sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;

the glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.

up-end the stick again. What happens next

is undiminished for having happened once,

twice, ten, and thousand times before.

who cares if all the music that transpires

is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?

You are like a rich man entering heaven

through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.