Mossbawn: The Seed Cutters
Mossbawn: The Seed Cutters - meaning Summary
Rural Labor Made Timeless
In this poem, Heaney remembers local farm workers cutting seed potatoes and presents them as both ordinary laborers and figures in a timeless scene. The speaker compares them to a Brueghel painting, which lifts the memory beyond a single farm task. The poem blends close observation with a sense of shared rural life, ending by placing the workers, and the speaker, inside a wider communal image.
Read Complete AnalysesThey seem hundreds of years away. Brueghel, You'll know them if I can get them true. They kneel under the hedge in a half-circle Behind a windbreak wind is breaking through. They are the seed cutters. The tuck and frill Of leaf-sprout is on the seed potates Buried under that straw. With time to kill, They are taking their time. Each sharp knife goes Lazily halving each root that falls apart In the palm of the hand: a milky gleam, And, at the centre, a dark watermark. Oh, calendar customs! Under the broom Yellowing over them, compose the frieze With all of us there, our anonymities.
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