Farewell, Seamus Heaney

Portrait of Seamus Heaney by Peter Edwards c 1987

I was fortunate enough to hear Seamus Heaney reading his poetry some years ago.
Many, many poets should be prevented at all costs from reading their own work.
Perhaps it is a fear of being overcome by emotion that makes so many writers assume a toneless, deadpan voice when reading, or perhaps they take their work too seriously, but whatever the reason, the results can be dire.


It was not like that with Seamus Heaney.
He sat easily on a stool and talked about growing up in Northern Ireland.
I was just one of an audience, but it felt as if there was no one else in the room, as if his words were in response to some question I had asked.
The images of his home, of relatives and neighbours, of life in Derry during the 40s and 50s, were painted swiftly and vividly and economically, but they were real and three-dimensional and made me feel as if I had known them, or at the very least, visited them for myself.  And he spoke poignantly of his father, and of rural traditions in his local area, and of the Troubles.

Perhaps in consequence of that, his poems, when he read them, seemed to speak of things I was familiar with. They sprang off the page and took life and form in my mind's eye, and even all these years later I remember clearly the pictures conjured by his soft understatement, the emotions that his words never actually stated.

This is one of the poems he read that day:

Mid-Term Break 

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

And here is another:

Thatcher

Bespoke for weeks, he turned up some morning
Unexpectedly, his bicycle slung
With a light ladder and a bag of knives.
He eyed the old rigging, poked at the eaves,

Opened and handled sheaves of lashed wheat-straw.
Next, the bundled rods: hazel and willow
Were flicked for weight, twisted in case they'd snap.
It seemed he spent the morning warming up:

Then fixed the ladder, laid out well honed blades
And snipped at straw and sharpened ends of rods
That, bent in two, made a white-pronged staple
For pinning down his world, handful by handful.

Couchant for days on sods above the rafters,
He shaved and flushed the butts, stitched all together
Into a sloped honeycomb, a stubble patch,
And left them gaping at his Midas touch.

I met him later, at a garden party.

He was affable and friendly, easy to talk to. I remember thinking What do you say to someone who has at his fingertips the words that are only on the tip of your tongue?

I remember him looking at me as if waiting for a question he thought I was about to ask

Meaningful words eluded my fingertips and my tongue.

But we had a pleasant conversation and aside from our chitchat, I did ask him something.

'Of your own books, which is your favourite?'

He looked surprised and after a few moments, he said: 'I suppose I'd have to say Death of a Naturalist.'

I don't know if that was his favourite, but I can understand any writer having an umbilical link to their first book, their first-born.

I have read many of his books since then, and long ago also bought The Rattle Bag which Heaney edited alongside Ted Hughes. I had to buy it, for the simple reason that I was once lucky enough to meet Ted Hughes too.

If a poem is an image, written on the heart with words, then Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes were both truly poets.

It is a sad day when the Earth loses one of her poets, and if a poem is an image, written on the heart with words, then Seamus Heaney - and Ted Hughes - were truly poets. And how badly the Earth needs poets,  someone who speaks for her and of her without guile or sleight of wit, someone who sees beyond what others see, and who, in touching on her truths, adds something, rather than depleting, constantly depleting.

Dermot Blackburn's portrait of Seamus Heaney, 2010

Poems: Mid-Term Break and Thatcher by Seamus Heaney