Analysis

The poem deals with the glory and harshness of nature (there are some links with Perch and Death of a Naturalist).

The blackberries ripen in late August. Heaney describes the process carefully over the first 4 lines.

The first one tastes ‘like thickened wine’, so fruity and pleasing (a simile). 

The metaphorical image ‘summer’s blood was in it’ is a reminder of the darker side as well, although nature seems a living thing, the eating of the berry causes a bleeding, ‘leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for picking’. This links to one of the deadly sins, ‘lust’ which again is a reminder of the darker side of nature, our carnal instincts (love of the flesh).

The ‘lust’ or ‘hunger’ sent them out picking blackberries with ‘milk cans’ and although the fruit is good there is the darker side of the pain of getting it ‘briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots’.

The onomatopoeia of ‘tinkling’ shows the sound the berries made on the bottom of the cans as they were thrown in.

There is a sense of evil or being watched with the ‘like a plate of eyes’ simile (line 15) making the process seem less pleasant. Their hands are injured with thorns and the image (simile) of ‘palms sticky as Bluebeard’s’ refers to a pirate who killed many, his hands sticky with blood from all the murders he committed just as their hands are covered with the blood of the blackberries, as if they have committed some form of natural murder as well.

The second stanza moves on from the collection of the berries to looking at what happens to the blackberries when they are left. The berries cause a fur in the bath, ‘a rat-grey fungus’, this metaphor emphasising the rotting element of the fruit, which does not last long after it is picked.

All elements seem unpleasant too as ‘the juice was stinking too’ so the once sweet wine-like nature of the fruit has gone. The fruit goes off quickly ‘the sweet flesh would turn sour’. There is a child-like quality to Heaney’s reaction to this ‘I almost felt like crying. It wasn’t fair’ as he is a child when this happened to him he feels angry that the fruit goes off so quickly.

He repeats the process each year, hoping they will not ‘rot’ but they always do. The cruel side to nature is shown here in using a simple theme and showing how there is a sad, darker side to it.