Seamus Heaney - From the Republic of Conscience lyrics

I At immigration, the clerk was an old man who produced a wallet from his homespun coat and showed me a photograph of my grandfather. The woman in customs asked me to declare the words of our traditional cures and charms to heal dumbness and avert the evil eye. No porters. No interpreter. No taxi. You carried your own burden and very soon your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared. II Fog is a dreaded omen there but lightning spells universal good and parents hang swaddled infants in trees during thunderstorms. Salt is their precious mineral. And seashells are held to the ear during births and funerals. The base of all inks and pigments is seawater. Their sacred symbol is a stylized boat. The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen, the hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye. At their inauguration, public leaders must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep to atone for their presumption to hold office - and to affirm their faith that all life sprang from salt in tears which the sky-god wept after he dreamt his solitude was endless. III I came back from that frugal republic with my two arms the one length, the customs woman having insisted my allowance was myself. The old man rose and gazed into my face and said that was official recognition that I was now a dual citizen. He therefore desired me when I got home to consider myself a representative and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue. Their emba**ies, he said, were everywhere but operated independently and no amba**ador would ever be relieved.