My author/poet love of the day goes out to Seamus Heaney, Irish poet, playwright, translator, Nobel Laureate in Literature.
A fixture in my heart and mind in recent years, Seamus Heaney offers a full experience of living in the exceptional world of ordinary words and circumstances. He dresses his poems quite nicely, and makes them accessible in a way that belies their sheer power to spark familiarity without the consciousness of realizing the discovery as it unfolds. Seek his words out and let them buzz around your brain. Although, many may have pints in their fists on this day of days, I propose that you can get equally intoxicated drinking from this man’s artful lines.
“When all the others were away at Mass”
by Seamus Heaney
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
