Anything.

Homer, Eight Bells, 1886

Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter


Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head


Before he hurls the lightning? Well, just now


He galloped his thunder cart and his horses



Across a clear blue sky. It shook the earth


And the clogged underearth, the River Styx,


The winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.


Anything can happen, the tallest towers





Be overturned, those in high places daunted,


Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune


Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one,


Setting it down bleeding on the next.



Ground gives. The heaven’s weight


Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle-lid.


Capstones shift, nothing resettles right.


Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.

Seamus Heaney