Seamus Heaney RIP

[Stavros]

Seamus Heaney, the finest Irish poet since Yeats, and one of the finest in any language, has died aged 74. He was one of a clutch of poets who emerged from Northern Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s at the same time as 'the Troubles' and did a great deal to maintain the dignity of the Northern Irish cultural landscape through some of its most depressing times. I followed his career from shortly after the publication of Death of a Naturalist and have never been let down through so many decades of fine writing.

His poem on the death of his young brother is a quiet masterpiece.

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

[moonunit7]

I was in the kitchen, Seamus was outside.

[Ecstatic]

RIP Seamus, a fine poet and a voice of the sea wind and earth.

Here's a favorite of mine:

The Given Note

On the most westerly Blasket
In a dry-stone hut
He got this air out of the night.

Strange noises were heard
By others who followed, bits of a tune
Coming in on loud weather

Though nothing like melody.
He blamed their fingers and ear
As unpractised, their fiddling easy

For he had gone alone into the island
And brought back the whole thing.
The house throbbed like his full violin.

So whether he calls it spirit music
Or not, I don't care. He took it
Out of the wind off mid-Atlantic.

Still he maintains, from nowhere,
It comes off the bow gravely,
Rephrases itself into the air.

[Ananke]

Sigh!
Another fine talent we will miss!
RIP

[Stavros]

I should apologise for the type in the title of the thread...sorry about that!

[bluesoul]

I should apologise for the type in the title of the thread...sorry about that!

it's okay. i forgive you

[Stavros]

No way of changing it otherwise I would.

[robertlouis]

Seamus Heaney, the finest Irish poet since Yeats, and one of the finest in any language, has died aged 74. He was one of a clutch of poets who emerged from Northern Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s at the same time as 'the Troubles' and did a great deal to maintain the dignity of the Northern Irish cultural landscape through some of its most depressing times. I followed his career from shortly after the publication of Death of a Naturalist and have never been let down through so many decades of fine writing.

His poem on the death of his young brother is a quiet masterpiece.

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.


Possibly my favourite amongst his poems too, thanks Stavros.

He was a gentle, modest soul with that gift for wordplay in English that the Irish seem blessed to find better than anyone else. His collaborations with and encouragement of younger poets were very much the measure of the man. He will be greatly missed and deservedly so.

[Prospero]

Thanks for this thread Stavros.

Heaney was utterly wonderful - as a poet and a man. A sad, sad loss. I saw him read whenever I could, the first time sharing the stsge with another Nobel Laureates, Czeslaw Milosz. A great evening.

One of my favourites - with a great personal resonance and importance is his poem from 1969 whose opening line gives the title for his fourth collection of verse, "Door Into The Dark"


The Forge
by Seamus Heaney


All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.