Seamus Heaney's Night Drive

I first encountered the poem 25 years ago when an old friend copied and sent to me. Shameless plug: my first book (1987) was a story collection called Night Driving. Many of the short stories in that book were included and sometimes revised in my collection Travelling Light  (2013)

I wonder if Heaney knew John Newlove's Driving. Probably. No, I'm sure Heaney did.

Night Drive

The smells of ordinariness
Were new on the night drive through France;
Rain and hay and woods on the air
Made warm draughts in the open car.

Signposts whitened relentlessly.
Montrueil, Abbéville, Beauvais
Were promised, promised, came and went,
Each place granting its name’s fulfilment.

A combine groaning its way late
Bled seeds across its work-light.
A forest fire smouldered out.
One by one small cafés shut.

I thought of you continuously
A thousand miles south where Italy
Laid its loin to France on the darkened sphere.
Your ordinariness was renewed there.

                                                 -Seamus Heaney, from Door Into the Dark (Faber)