Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

[Padraig]

Kind words noted, ferney.

Nocturne OP.2

A sad air's best for night as you mope about
the house, closing windows, checking doors.
Slow, cumulative strokes of the violin bow,
the most ruminative notes that can be coaxed
from the cello, nocturnes unlocked by black piano keys.

Strains that are trained directly on the heart
when its resistance sinks, like temperatures,
to a day's end low: music that tells of how
things stand in the troubled world you now have
in your hands to potter about in on your own.

Music of the kind whose fearful darkness would
unnerve you as a child, but whose darkness
seems the very point, this late night here; a slow
movement's stark conclusions ringing sadly true.

Dennis O'Driscoll

What's the connection with Seamus Heaney?

O'Driscoll collaborated with Seamus Heaney in Stepping Stones 2008, a most valuable companion to Heaney's life and writings; he died on Christmas Eve 2012.
The poem Nocturne Op2 is from O'Driscoll's last book, Dear Life 2012 - an echo of the end of The Conway Stewart?
A new edition of Dear Life in 2014 had a Foreword by Heaney, written in 2013 before HE died in August.
Suddenly mortality is the theme, making Nocturne Op 2 a 'final lullaby', as Heaney describes it, for O'Driscoll, for himself? and for whoever.

[Padraig]

Remember Treasure Island?
You do!

In the Attic

I

Like Jim Hawkins aloft in the cross-trees
Of Hispaniola, nothing underneath him
But still green water and clean bottom sand,

The ship aground, the canted mast far out
Above a sea-floor where striped fish pass in shoals -
And when they've passed, the face of Israel Hands

That rose in the shrouds before Jim shot him dead
Appears to rise again...'But he was dead enough,'
The story says, 'being both shot and drowned.'

II

A birch tree planted twenty years ago
Comes between the Irish Sea and me
At the attic skylight, a man marooned

In his own loft, a boy
Shipshaped in the crow's nest of a life.
Airbrushed to and fro, wind-drunk, braced

By all that's thrumming up from keel to masthead,
Rubbing his eyes to believe them and this most
Buoyant, billowy, topgallant birch.

III

Ghost-footing what was then the terra firma
Of hallway linoleum, grandfather now appears,
His voice a-waver like the draught-prone screen

They'd set up in the Club Rooms earlier
For the matinee I've just come back from.
'And Isaac Hands,' he asks, 'Was Isaac in it?'

His memory of the name a-waver too,
His mistake perpetual, once and for all,
Like the single splash when Israel's body fell.

IV

As I age and blank on names,
As my uncertainty on stairs
Is more and more the lightheadedness

Of a cabin boy's first time on the rigging,
As the memorable bottoms out
Into the irretrievable,

It's not that I can't imagine still
That slight untoward rupture and world-tilt
As a wind freshened and the anchor weighed.

Seamus Heaney Human Chain 2010

[johncorrigan]

While over in the Hebrides my pal gave me a copy of 'Irish Pages', a journal of contemporary writing produced in Belfast. This particular issue was dedicated to Seamus Heaney with prose and poetry written about SH, pieces by writers inspired by him, as well as some written by the great man himself; and there was lots to enjoy in the collections. As someone brought up Catholic in the West of Scotland, though no longer practising, I was very moved by this poem from the collection.

A Found Poem


Like everybody else, I bowed my head

during the consecration of the bread and wine,

lifted my eyes to the raised host and raised chalice,

believed (whatever it means) that a change occurred.

I went to the altar rails and received the mystery

on my tongue, returned to my place, shut my eyes fast, made

an act of thanksgiving, opened my eyes and felt

time starting up again.

There was never a scene

when I had it out with myself or with an other.

The loss of faith occurred off stage. Yet I cannot

disrespect words like ‘thanksgiving’ or ‘host’

or even ‘communion wafer.’ They have an undying

pallor and draw, like well water far down.

– Seamus Heaney (2005)
(from an American Volume: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People)

[Padraig]

Thanks for that,John.
That makes three of us.

[johncorrigan]

Thanks for that,John.
That makes three of us.

Yes indeed, Padraig - in this volume of 'Irish Pages', Andrew O'Hagan, a friend of Seamus, says 'a genius with a sublime human touch is now beyond reach. I recall the story of the little boy who watched as Robert Burns' funeral cortege passed through the town of Dumfries. "But who will be our poet now?" he said to his mother.

[johncorrigan]

I chanced on this programme about Yeats and Heaney on 4xtra comparing the two nobel laureates from the archives. Most enjoyable. Hadn't it heard it first time round.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03c241n

[Padraig]

That passed a pleasant hour John; thank you.
I was down in Heaney country recently - they have a thriving appreciation society there.

Oh! They said that in the programme didn''t they.

[Padraig]

I have not yet visited Seamus Heaney's grave. I intend to do so this month.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-33931232

The Gravel Walks is the finale ensemble tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ_Q-RGQDzI

[Globaltruth]

I was down in Heaney country recently

"the green spirit of the hedges"

I'm reading "Sweeney Astray" for the first time - plagued by Lyncheachan, feasting on watercress, Mad Sweeney makes his away hither and thither.

[johncorrigan]

Travel well and I hope the weather is clement.

A Spin in the Rain with Seamus Heaney

You had to drive across to Donegal Town
To drop off a friend at the Dublin bus
So I said I’d come along for the spin –

A spin in the rain.
Bales of rain
But you did not alter your method of driving,

Which is to sit right down under the steering wheel
And to maintain an upwards-peering posture
Treating the road as part of the sky,

A method which motoring correspondents call
Horizontal-to-the-vertical.
The hills of Donegal put down their heads

As you circled upwards past their solitary farmhouses,
All those aged couples drenched over firesides,
Who once were courting couples in parked cars.

You parked the car in Donegal town and we walked the shops –
Magee’s and The Four Masters Bookshop.
You bought ice-cream cones. I bought women’s magazines.

We drove up the hills past Mountcharles
And Bruckless and Ardara.
There was a traffic jam in Ardara,

Out of which you extricated yourself
With a jack-knife U-turn on a hairpin bend
With all the bashful panache of a cattle farmer –

A cattle farmer who is not an egotist
But who is a snail of magnanimity
A verbal source of calm.

Back in the Glenties you parked outside the National School
Through whose silent classrooms we strayed,
Silent with population maps of the world.

Standing with our backs to a deserted table-tennis table
We picked up a pair of table-tennis bats
And, without being particularly conscious of what we were at,

We began to bat the ball one to the other
Until a knock-up was in progress,
Holding our bats in pen grips.

So here we are playing a game of ping-pong
Which is a backdrop to our conversation
While the conversation is a backdrop to our game.

We are talking about our children and you speak
Of the consolation of children when they grow up
To become our most trusted of all companions.

I could listen to you speak along these lines
For the rest of the day and I dare say
You could listen to me also speak along my lines:

I have always thought that ping-pong balls –
Static spheres fleet as thoughts –
Have flight textures similar to souls’.

I note that we are both of us
No mean strikers of the ball and that, although
We have distinct techniques of addressing the table –

Myself standing back and leaping about,
Yourself standing close and scarcely moving –
What chiefly occupies us both is spin.

As darkness drops, the rain clears.
I take my leave of you to prepare my soul
For tonight’s public recital. Wishing each other well.

Poetry! To be able to look a bullet in the eye,
With a whiff of the bat to return it spinning to drop
Down scarcely over the lapped net; to stand still; to stop.

Paul Durcan

[Lat-Literal]

Travel well and I hope the weather is clement.

A Spin in the Rain with Seamus Heaney

You had to drive across to Donegal Town
To drop off a friend at the Dublin bus
So I said I’d come along for the spin –

A spin in the rain.
Bales of rain
But you did not alter your method of driving,

Which is to sit right down under the steering wheel
And to maintain an upwards-peering posture
Treating the road as part of the sky,

A method which motoring correspondents call
Horizontal-to-the-vertical.
The hills of Donegal put down their heads

As you circled upwards past their solitary farmhouses,
All those aged couples drenched over firesides,
Who once were courting couples in parked cars.

You parked the car in Donegal town and we walked the shops –
Magee’s and The Four Masters Bookshop.
You bought ice-cream cones. I bought women’s magazines.

We drove up the hills past Mountcharles
And Bruckless and Ardara.
There was a traffic jam in Ardara,

Out of which you extricated yourself
With a jack-knife U-turn on a hairpin bend
With all the bashful panache of a cattle farmer –

A cattle farmer who is not an egotist
But who is a snail of magnanimity
A verbal source of calm.

Back in the Glenties you parked outside the National School
Through whose silent classrooms we strayed,
Silent with population maps of the world.

Standing with our backs to a deserted table-tennis table
We picked up a pair of table-tennis bats
And, without being particularly conscious of what we were at,

We began to bat the ball one to the other
Until a knock-up was in progress,
Holding our bats in pen grips.

So here we are playing a game of ping-pong
Which is a backdrop to our conversation
While the conversation is a backdrop to our game.

We are talking about our children and you speak
Of the consolation of children when they grow up
To become our most trusted of all companions.

I could listen to you speak along these lines
For the rest of the day and I dare say
You could listen to me also speak along my lines:

I have always thought that ping-pong balls –
Static spheres fleet as thoughts –
Have flight textures similar to souls’.

I note that we are both of us
No mean strikers of the ball and that, although
We have distinct techniques of addressing the table –

Myself standing back and leaping about,
Yourself standing close and scarcely moving –
What chiefly occupies us both is spin.

As darkness drops, the rain clears.
I take my leave of you to prepare my soul
For tonight’s public recital. Wishing each other well.

Poetry! To be able to look a bullet in the eye,
With a whiff of the bat to return it spinning to drop
Down scarcely over the lapped net; to stand still; to stop.

Paul Durcan

Yes - and this surely sits between the atmosphere in Van Morrison's "Coney Island" - "Stop off at Ardglass for a couple of jars of mussels and some potted herrings in case we get famished before dinner" - and VM's "In the Days Before Rock N Roll" in which Durcan has a key role. Heaney - from "Digging" to "Beowulf" - merits all the praise that is heaped on him.

[johncorrigan]

Yes - and this surely sits between the atmosphere in Van Morrison's "Coney Island" - "Stop off at Ardglass for a couple of jars of mussels and some potted herrings in case we get famished before dinner" - and VM's "In the Days Before Rock N Roll" in which Durcan has a key role. Heaney - from "Digging" to "Beowulf" - merits all the praise that is heaped on him.

Bloomin' 'eck!...I never realised before that it was Mr Durcan, Lat-Lit! Thanks - what a tune!

[Padraig]

Bloomin' 'eck!...I never realised before that it was Mr Durcan, Lat-Lit! Thanks - what a tune!

Me either John. What a Trio - Heaney, Durcan and Morrison in the space of 3 posts. Not to mention John C, Global and Lit-Lat - I'm right in thinking that Lit-Lat is literally the Lat from a previous World? If so then céad míle fáilte romhat.*

Sweeney shares with Beowulf the attention of Seamus Heaney towards a classic of ancient literature, the one a mediaeval Irish poem, the other an Anglo Saxon epic. Heaney's prefaces to these two translations are classics of modesty and erudition themselves.

* Just confirmed my guess. Sorry for the feeble attempts at puns.

[Lat-Literal]

Me either John. What a Trio - Heaney, Durcan and Morrison in the space of 3 posts. Not to mention John C, Global and Lit-Lat - I'm right in thinking that Lit-Lat is literally the Lat from a previous World? If so then céad míle fáilte romhat.*

Sweeney shares with Beowulf the attention of Seamus Heaney towards a classic of ancient literature, the one a mediaeval Irish poem, the other an Anglo Saxon epic. Heaney's prefaces to these two translations are classics of modesty and erudition themselves.

* Just confirmed my guess. Sorry for the feeble attempts at puns.

Many thanks Padraig for the kind words before and also afterwards.

[Globaltruth]

Sweeney shares with Beowulf the attention of Seamus Heaney towards a classic of ancient literature, the one a mediaeval Irish poem, the other an Anglo Saxon epic. Heaney's prefaces to these two translations are classics of modesty and erudition themselves.

the prefaces are wonderful pieces in their own right (or write as JL would say), although I cannot imagine the subsequent works without them.