Seamus Heaney

[Bryan 1,362]

Died today aged 74, he'd won a Nobel prize for poetry, I'm not fan of poetry but this guy could write. As below on the death of his brother.

 

Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Seamus Heaney

 

[Astanley 11,580]

One of the great poets , some of his poetry really appeals to the countryman . R I P

[Big bald beautiful 1,231]

Spooky..I read two of his Wednesday night

The joy of the internet , loads of great poams and stories .

Sad news

[Walt - Jabsco 95]

Just reading the news on another forum , such a sad loss. A truly gifted person

[Frann 882]

Was lucky enough to be at a reading with him in Swansea in 1998 at the University (I felt like a poetical pygmy alongside him ) Was genuinely gutted on hearing this earlier