Year 10 response to the poem 'Mid-Term Break' by Seamus Heaney

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.

At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying-

He had always taken funerals in his stride-

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble."

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,

He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year

'The Spider's Web' by Karen Morgan

As I looked out the window, the sky a clear blue,
The sun's rays streaming down the glistening on

the dew drops of the spiders web.

The Spider building and nurturing his web

As any other day, but not just any other day,

and no matter how clear or blue the sky was,

It seemed sunless and as black as night to me.

As black as the shadow of death that, lingers over our heads

As black as the shadow of death that had engulfed my youngest son's life.

Seeing him in the box, the food of awareness that he was no longer with me.

There would be none of his laughter that I'd taken for granted every time I heard it.

And I just wanted to see, one last time, the creases of his dimples when he smiled.

The throbbing of the pain in my chest, was like a bullet in to my heart.

The flame of anger flickered and spat inside me.

If only I had been there in time, if only it had been me instead of him

I glance at the spider once more

The spider can build and replace any damaged spoke as he nurtures his web.

My youngest son lay there motionless the flow of life no longer passed through his lips

And I can never replace the damaged spoke of my dead son.

'The Mothers Mourning' by Penny Reeve-Pogson

She did not heed the biting wind,
Forced by the cool winter months,

Nor did she care for the strangers who stared

At her young son in his box.

Her face depicted anguish.

Her mind filled with dolour and rage

Her actions acute and incisive,

Unable to cover the grief she displayed.

She stared blankly at the boy in his coffin,

Wondering why should it be him,

Her tears were caught in her throat,

Diminished by her abhorrence for his death.

'Funeral' by Rufus Impey

Bells toll across the damp village
We walk in massed ranks of

Black up the dark yew flanked path.

Church sombre grey and cold

A forest of black hats

Flourishing in the formal crowd.

Through the conspicuous stained glass

Windows, rain drums from the leaden

Sky, leaden as the sound of the priest.

The four foot box brought slowly in. A

dignified and respectful silence descends

On the congregation.

Priest mumbles irrelevant Latin prayers

Unsure how to deal with the grief in

That sad damp grey church.

Hymns sung with no joy, no flourish

Mother's anger replaced by grief

As a slow resignation sets in.

Time is the only healer, no scar

Can ever be erased by a

Quick fix and will remain for ever.

The priest stands in lily white robes flanked

By elegant yet ridiculous flower arrangements.

As the air vibrates with solemn music

The box proceeds in silence through

The curtain of rain. Feet of the pall

Bearers leave verdant stripes across the grass.

So quiet the church yard seems

Dark grey and forbidding.

Swallowing up all sound known to man.

Box lowered in gentle reverence

Family's grief out poured

And the body is at last laid to rest.

All over with a host of shy smiles

Under a virtual forest of umbrellas

The crowd departs in silence unusual.

Film/Play script: 'The Confession
by Lily Dryburgh-Smith

Characters: Priest
Mother
Scenery: Inside a church, a confession box is the centrepiece.

Outline: After the boy's death the mother is angry. She is angry at the hit-and- run driver but most of all she is angry at the church. She thought that because she had been a God fearing Catholic all her life that nothing bad would befall her. The church had lead her to believe that if you were good then God would protect you. After the death the mother is left in confusion and she has begun to lose faith in the church. She now blames the church for what has occurred. Her family has begun to fall apart, the father has started to drink heavily and her eldest son Seamus won't talk to her. Left all on her own her hate for the church grows and scared of the way that she is feeling, she goes to a confession although not in her usual church. At first she is scared to admit that she feels this way and she says that she is coming on behalf of a friend.

In the church....

A woman looking a little dazed and confused looks around furtively as though she is scared of someone seeing her. Her smooth brow creases as she looks around for something. Her gaze fixes on the confession box and with one more quick glance behind her she walks unsteadily over to it the sound of her heels echoing noisily with every step. As each sound reverberates off the cold stone she seems to cringe, but at last she reaches the deep reddish brown wood shell of the confession box and slips inside.

(Swish-clack. The confession curtain is drawn back by the priest)

MOTHER: Bless me father, for I have sinned. ( She does the sign of the cross, held tightly in her hands is a delicate gold crucifix)

PRIEST: How long is it since your last confession?

MOTHER: Four weeks father.

PRIEST: What is it child, what is your confession?

MOTHER: (she clears her throat and appears nervous) I am worried that a friend is losing faith in the church. (pause) Since she has lost her four year old son.

PRIEST: Then why have you come and not she?

MOTHER: Well..... I..... (she stumbles for words, but she can no longer lie so she admits her sin)

PRIEST: Yes child?

MOTHER: That was me. I have lost faith.

PRIEST: Why? The church is here to support you.

MOTHER: But why? Why did they let this happen. (she sniffs) My boy did not deserve to die. I have done nothing but pray and be obedient to the church all my life. (her voice breaks) And all you can reward me with is this, this. My boy may have ascended into heaven. I mean, I was already teaching him the bible. (she chokes)

But you can't bring him back, can you ! (her voice is unsteady) You can't bring him back. (the priest lets her go on) They say that faith in the church will make you strong and happy. How has it brought me happiness? My favourite is gone. My husband has started drinking and by eldest son has gone back to school without a care for his poor mother. What am I to do? (she breaks down and the priest lets her cry quietly for a while)

PRIEST: We can't bring back your son. We can't physically stop these things from occurring, no. We are not witches who conjure up the dead....

MOTHER: What then? What can you do? Send a great flood down to drown that devil of a man. (her tone is becoming patronising) I don't even believe in that story anymore. That great figure, Noah. Why was he only to take two animals of each kind. How did he manage that! (her anger increases) I mean think of all those other animals that were left behind and perished. What did they do to justify that! What, what if he missed out a species. I mean what....What. (she seems to lose her train of thought)

PRIEST: I think you are confusing science and religion....

MOTHER: Well which one should I believe? Science has the facts, the knowledge and the rules of nature. The doctors can tell me that my son died from massive haemorrhaging and brain damage. You couldn't tell me that could you? No, you couldn't.

PRIEST: (silence)

MOTHER: No, you couldn't. You can't tell me why that man hit my son, can you. If God sent down a flood to drown all sinners then, why can't he now?

PRIEST: (still silence)

MOTHER: Why won't you say anything? (she searches the dark silhouette of the priest with the innocent eyes of a child and her voice trembling)

PRIEST: What do you want me to say?

MOTHER: What do you mean? What do I want you to say? You're supposed to be here to support, you said that yourself. To tell me that.... That. I don't know anymore. (her tone is biting)

PRIEST: This happens to most people...

MOTHER: I don't presume that many mothers lose their child as horrifically as I did. Are you saying that I am making a scene? You are making my grief absurd. (anger flickers in her eyes)

PRIEST: You have lost your faith..

MOTHER: How does that?....

PRIEST: You came here saying that you had lost your faith. But you still came to the church. You still saw it as support. You still thought of it as a haven. You cannot have lost your faith, you came here to reaffirm it.

MOTHER: I have lost my son. (she has quietened as if comforted)

PRIEST: It was not my fault, it was not the church's fault. The driver is the one to blame.

MOTHER: Don't you think I know that. I am not an child. I have lived. I have read the bible. I have seen and breathed the same air as sinners. I am as much a Catholic as you are. (her anger has flared up again and little pink spots appear on her cheeks)

PRIEST: But you have failed to understand.

MOTHER: Failed to understand what? That you have failed to impregnate that man (she chokes at the mention) with the power of God's word.

PRIEST: Everyone is their own master.

MOTHER: Excuse me?

PRIEST: We, as priests, can only reach out to those who listen. People can either listen to us or the devil or what ever that evil opposing force, which may possess a person's soul, is. There is bad in all of us.

MOTHER: Why?

PRIEST: I can't answer that.

MOTHER: Is there an answer?

PRIEST: Perhaps not.

( she looks down at the tiny cross in her hand and looks up, she understands)

PRIEST: Is there anything else child?

MOTHER: No. No thank you father.

She walks slowly out of the church on to the wet gray pavements and past the fogged up windows of the shops. In the church there is silence except for the rustle of people shifting their position on the kneelers as they pray, but in-between two cold stone tiles there lies a tiny gold crucifix, still warm from the pressure of a woman's hand.