A Poem Signed by Seamus Heaney

This will be my last blog entry on the death of the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney.

In 2004 I had the privilege of attending the annual Yeats Summer Conference in Sligo, Ireland. Seamus Heaney was there and recited his poetry and lectured before fairly small groups. In the evening, he'd go out to drink with the participants (and not just with the big deals). At the end of the conference we all received beautifully printed and signed poems by Heaney and Brendan Kennelly. Heaney's poem at that time had not been published. It was called "The Blackbird of Glanmore," and dealt with the accidental death of his little brother while Seamus was away at school. I have tried to photograph the document below (it's not yet framed--it's rolled up and in a mailing tube, so photographing it was tricky):

The Uillean Pipe Tune Played at Seamus Heaney's Funeral

Below is a video of Ronan Browne playing "Port na bPucai" ("Tune of the Faeries") on the uillean pipes (elbow pipes or Irish pipes). This is the same tune that Liam O'Flynn played at Seamus Heaney's funeral yesterday.

Seamus Heaney's Poem about the Blasket Islands (County Kerry)

"The Given Note"

Heaney's poem "The Given Note" - about the Blasket fiddler who retrieves the mysterious Port na bPúcaí (The Fairies' Tune) from Inisvicillane - is the conceptual touchstone or fulcrum for this music. The poem's fiddler becomes a metaphor for the poet himself, for his seeing and hearing of the beauties, ordinary and extraordinary mysteries of the world. The fiddler's grave rephrasing of the tune becomes Heaney's translation into poetry of the "loud weather" of this world and human nature. The music moves between the seen and the translated, offering a homage to the beauties of each and to the fiddler who moves between them.

Rachel Holstead 2009

The Given Note

On the most westerly Blasket
In a dry-stone hut
He got this air out of the night.

Strange noises were heard
By others who followed, bits of a tune
Coming in on loud weather

Though nothing like melody.
He blamed their fingers and ear
As unpractised, their fiddling easy

For he had gone alone into the island
And brought back the whole thing.
The house throbbed like his full violin.

So whether he calls it spirit music
Or not, I don't care. He took it
Out of wind off mid-Atlantic.

Still he maintains, from nowhere.
It comes off the bow gravely,
Rephrases itself into the air.


Seamus Heaney
from the collection 'Opened Ground, Poems 1966-1996', published by Faber and Faber 1998 

This poem was recited at Seamus Heaney's funeral yesterday. 

Seamus Heaney's Poem "Punishment"

The world has lost its great poet, Seamus Heaney. Below is one of his early poems, and surely one of the greatest. He wrote many poems about the "bog bodies"--bodies preserved in the peat bogs of Northern Europe (google "bog bodies" then click on images to see examples). This poem can be found in the collection entitled "North" and can be purchased at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and at many other places.

Punishment

I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.

It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs.

I can see her drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs.

Under which at first
she was a barked sapling
that is dug up
oak-bone, brain-firkin:

her shaved head
like a stubble of black corn,
her blindfold a soiled bandage,
her noose a ring

to store
the memories of love.
Little adulteress,
before they punished you

you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeuur

of your brain’s exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles’ webbing
and all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,

who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.

Seamus Heaney's Poem "Digging"

Below is a poem rich with love of family and love of place. The place is the family farm in County Derry Ireland. The family mentioned are his father and grandfather. Seamus Heaney was not to make his living as a turf digger or potato farmer, like his father and grandfather. But he honored their labor with his own labor of love--his poetry, essays, translations, lectures, and the like.

Digging

by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney, "Digging" from Death of a Naturalist. Copyright 1966 by Seamus Heaney. Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC.

Passing of Seamus Heaney, Poet

I have just heard that Seamus Heaney, one of the world's great poets, has died in Dublin at age 74. I will insert the New York Times story link:  New York Times--Passing of Seamus Heaney

May he Rest in Peace!