My father was a farmer and my mother was a farm wife, and being a farm wife in those days meant preserving things. Like blackberries. But before they could be preserved, they had to be picked. I remember so many hot summer days when she would drag my unwilling corpus out to the blackberry briar patch to be pricked and scratched as we picked those luscious berries. Unlike Seamus Heaney's experience, our berries never went to rot. My mother soon turned them into jellies, jams, preserves - they were delicious and were a comfort to us through the long, cold winters, a reminder that summer would come again.
Blackberry-Picking
by Seamus Heaney
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
I picked blackberries every year until I was in my teens, but the fondest memories are the little child memories. Purple hands, chin and clothes spring to mind. I wonder if kids today would even eat fruit straight from the bush, or have they been so brainwashed about washing them first?
ReplyDeleteI suspect that kids - ever the rebels - have no problems eating fruit right off the vine!
DeleteNormal children still eat blackberries straight off the bush. I saw my great-grandson do that very thing a couple of days ago. Blackberry and apple crumble is a favourite here.
ReplyDeleteOh, yes, I forgot to mention my mother's berry cobblers. A serving topped with a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream - nothing sweeter!
DeleteIn my 30's, we lived in rural Arkansas for several years, and there were wild blackberry bushes on our property. I made jam and jelly. My husband made wine. We also ate them off the plants. It was worth all the scratches and fighting off some kind of large fly that buzzbombed us. Memories!
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, the horseflies! I remember those as well.
DeleteI love this poem. It's one I'm actually already familiar with. :D
ReplyDeleteI think it is one of his more famous ones.
DeleteMy grandma was the queen of preserves. She grew peaches (those sweet, sweet peach preserves!) and plums , along with all the vegetables, and she canned everything she could.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that your grandma and my mother had a lot in common.
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