…given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking.
Excerpt from Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney
My aunt came home the other night from Dunnes, and I was helping her unpack the groceries when I spied the pack of blackberries. Before I realised what I was doing, they were sitting on the counter with the plastic peeled back and I’d popped one in my mouth. There truly are some things you eat which rewire your brain with their deliciousness. I tasted “summer’s blood” on a dark February evening and I thought this was the nature of spring tearing up through the Earth in the form of daffodils and genetically enhanced blackberries from Morocco. Even as the rain persists, those blackberries left a stain upon my tongue, lingering with the hope of fruit, flowers, and sun to come.
I watched the newest film in the 28 Days Later franchise, in which the mutated zombie bit into a blackberry, dying his hands violet as he discovered the humanity which lay dormant within him. That I felt so connected to a zombie who had the fog of the undead virus momentarily lifted by a piece of fruit is perhaps indicative of a need to take Vitamin D supplements – but I also think this is the way of spring: waking you up from your sleep. Gracefully, I will then suggest that you should sink your teeth into this issue of Radius. Let Dublin’s artistic multitudes wake you up; let it help you pop your head up like the bunches of daffodils which endure alongside freeways and the daisies which rip through concrete. Enjoy!
