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The Daily Poem

Seamus Heaney's "The Railway Children"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6729 Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2020

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today's poem is from the great Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, and it's called "The Railway Children."

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This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern. Today's Thursday, April 30th, 2020.

0:08.4

The poem that I'm going to read to you today is by one of my favorites, Seamus Heaney. He lived from 1939 to 2013, and he was an Irish poet.

0:19.2

And last year, a collection came out from FSG called 100 poems.

0:24.1

It's a collection of poems that I've mentioned before on this podcast,

0:26.6

and it was curated by Heaney's family.

0:29.5

And there's a poem in here that I wanted to read to you.

0:32.4

I've recently found myself going back more and more to my most favorite poets,

0:36.7

including Richard Wilbur, who I read from

0:38.1

last week, and Mr. Heaney, who I'm going to read from today. So if I turn to some of these

0:43.8

favorites here in the podcast, a time or two too often, I hope you'll forgive me for that.

0:48.9

But this is the railway children. This is how it goes.

0:54.4

When we climbed the ropes

0:55.9

of the cutting, we were eye-level

0:57.8

with the white cups of the telegraph poles

1:00.1

and the sizzling wires.

1:03.4

Like lovely free hand,

1:05.8

they curved for miles east

1:07.7

and miles west beyond us,

1:10.2

sagging under their burden of swallows.

1:13.6

We were small and thought we knew nothing worth knowing.

1:19.1

We thought words traveled the wires in the shiny pouches of raindrops,

1:24.6

each one seated full with the light of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves

...

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