The Railway Children

When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
We were eye level with the white cups
Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.

Like lovely freehand they curved for miles
East and miles west beyond us, sagging
Under their burden of swallows.

We were small and thought we knew nothing
Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In the tiny pouches of raindrops,

Each one seeded full with the light
Of the sky, the gleam if the lines, and ourselves
So infinitesimally scaled

We could stream through the eye of a needle.

by Seamus Heaney


When we were kids, Hilary, Tina and I used to play on this embankment next to the railway line. In the summer it would be covered with a tangle of undergrowth and we had great fun tunnelling through to make a den from which we could watch the trains passing.

The initals H.T are still there, carved into the trunk of a nearby tree............