Seamus Heaney has slipped on to his rest; Irish contradictions there cannot lacerate his breast. Imitate him if you dare, world-besotted traveler: he sang sad humanity.
In the early 90s I saw a reading of The Cure at Troy at the 92nd St Y. It was shattering. Heaney's great gift is always the extraction of simple, clear, lyric humanity from awful history and impossible complexity.
The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker’s father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.
History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.
I'd not known that Joe Biden was a Heaney fan; interesting, I guess.
Heaney is a giant, but a gentle one. Considering how his verse inhabits my mind like the God who caresses the daily and the nightly earth, I'm amazed at how struck dumb I am by learning he's gone.
Seamus Heaney will never be silent, until hope and history cease to rhyme.
RIP.