Seamus Heaney, Simply RIP

I found out this morning that the prolific Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, has passed. I’m not one for waxing lyrical on such things, but as my very first literary influence I cannot stop myself from recognising this Nobel prize-winner’s effect on me and the loss he is to Irish literature.

Compared to the greatness of Yeats, Beckett and Shaw on numerous occasions, his writing was described by the Nobel committee as “works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past”. Always the humble gentleman, your spectacular prose will live on in the hearts it has touched, Mr. Heaney, and of course, in the Irish educational curriculum for generations to come.

I leave you with the very first poem that changed my perspective on literature forever.

 

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.

Seamus Heaney

---

‹ [GAME] My Walking Dead Experience Episode 1 – A New Day

[FILM] Threesome – We’re The Millers, Now You See Me, Pain & Gain ›

---

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Irish literature, Irish poetry, Nobel Prize, Poetry, RIP, Seamus Heaney