Traffic holding its breath,
Sky a tense diaphragm:
Dusk hung like a backcloth
That shook where a swan swam,
Tremulous as a hawk
Hanging deadly, calm.
A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.
Our Juvenilia
Had taught us both to wait,
Not to publish feeling
And regret it all too late -
Juvenilia refers to an artist’s early artwork, usually not their best. In this case Heaney compares the couple’s juvenilia to their early relationships with others that scared them and how those relationships have made them “Twice Shy” and reluctant to open up to each other.
Twice Shy