Four Letters Long: The Biggest Words
“Love was biggest word, the hardest to write”
– Seamus Heaney
The biggest words, four letters long: not in what they are:
But rather what they represent that we must face:
The emotion to adore another, we though writers cannot write:
And though we know we are writers, we cannot take the title: poet.
Another language for Heaney sufficed: our native tongue
Registering his children in their new Wicklow school
The schoolmaster knew best: the father between jobs
Who would not call himself poet in English, found the tongue
Of our forefathers used to call him such, and was content
To state without speaking loud: to say with minds voice:
That will do… the pen marked on the page
“File” – a poet by any other name being as good.
In time, and it took time, the poems flowed
Love in its time, lines caressed, was addressed,
But it took its time in coming: what a harvest
Seeds sown, germinated, fruit picked, seeds sown again…
Four more letters, so hard to write initially
So hard for men to say what they do and are
Though the subject of each – who they love and that they writing are a poet
Is the essence of as humans, what they are.