(This post, which includes a poem ("Postscript") by Seamus Heaney, ran originally on August 2, 2013. Heaney died in Dublin on August 30. Check the New York Review for a series of NYRB pieces on the poet, published over the years. The only time I met Heaney was--lucky for me--in his hometown of Derry, in 1992, when he and Ted Hughes together gave a reading at the medieval guild hall. What a privilege to hear the man in that setting.)
Photo courtesy of Paul Lynch's iPhone, in West Clare. Lynch's debut novel Red Sky In Morning comes out in the US in November.
And speaking of Co. Clare:
Postscript
Into County Clare, along the
Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the
wind
And the light are working off each
other
So that the ocean on one side is
wild
With foam and glitter, and inland
among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake
is lit
By the earthed lightning of a
flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and
ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown
headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy
underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and
capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither
here nor there,
A hurry through which known and
strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the
car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and
blow it open.
---Seamus
Heaney
seamus is fantastic
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