SEAMUS HEANEY’S POEM ABOUT BOG BUTTER. Jennifer Mclagan’s book also quotes a passage from Seamus Heaney about bog butter:
“Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter
Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.”
The poem is called “Bogland” and it is about Ireland’s land.
The complete poem is on the Internet Poetry Archive (and the link connects to an audio of Heaney reading the poem).
Bogland by Seamus Heaney
We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening–
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,
Is wooed into the cyclops’ eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.
They’ve taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.
Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter
Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They’ll never dig coal here,
Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,
Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.