So a new similitude is given us

And we say: The soul may be compared

Unto a spoonbait that a child discovers

Beneath the sliding lid of a pencil case,

Glimpsed once and imagined for a lifetime

Risen and free and spooling out of nowhere –

A shooting star going back up the darkness.

It flees him and it burns him all at once

Like the single drop that Dives implored

Falling and falling into a great gulf.

The exit, the polished helmet of a hero

Laid out amidships above scudding water.

Exit, alternatively, a toy of light

Reeled through him upstream, snagging on nothing.

The Spoonbait – Seamus Heaney