Seamus Heaney

[Heathcliff]

Seamus Heaney was a very famous Irish poet; he won the 1995 Nobel Prize for literature. I remember studying a few of his early poems for GCSE English.

Heaney died, aged 74, a couple of days ago. I was listening to Radio 4 just now, to a special program with Heaney reading some of his own poems.

I've been posting lately about writing on the forum, and for once- instead of talking about my own amateur forum writing- I thought it might be nice just to share a poem I like from this professional poet. This is one I just heard on the radio:

St Kevin and the Blackbird

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.

The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside

His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff

As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands

and Lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked

Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked

Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand

Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks

Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

*

And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,

Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?

Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?

Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?

Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?

Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river,

‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely

For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird

And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

[tma]

Oh... I really like that! Now I need to see if I can find him reading it- there is always something in the reading of the poem I think. Especially when you hear the author his/herself reading their work.

I mean- aside from the allusions and the brilliant imagery. It makes me wonder what his cadence would be. I automatically put in my own when reading it but that would be cool to hear.

Although that is something that I think is cool with artistic works- there is part of what the artist puts in that is always released when it is out there. So when performing plays, reading poetry, singing and playing music- it is all made new when you perform the works of someone else.

Ok... rambling is done.