Chris McDonnell: Seamus Heaney – a poet remembered

a poet remembered

 Chris McDonnell                                  

“Walk on air against your better judgement”

Heaney’s tombstone 

Not many live lives that, in their passing, are so noticed and admired as that of Seamus Heaney who died at the end of August nine years ago. And even fewer poets are afforded spontaneous  recognition of their work, but then Heaney wasn’t just some passing wordsmith. The greatness of his poetry was recognised internationally and he was rewarded with the Nobel Prize in 1995, acclaimed as Ireland’s finest poet since Yeats.

He was, first and foremost, an Irishman from Derry and his background and inculturation came from the countryside where he grew up. A Northern Irishman, a Catholic and a Nationalist, he later moved to the South and spent much of his life living in the same house in Dublin. Copious words have been written about his poetry and academic life over the years. It is not my intention to make a poor effort at replicating that story. Rather, I would like to reflect on the personal impression he made on me and I am sure, countless others.

His poetry was never religious in that pious sense, but his writing was always deeply spiritual. He was concerned with many issues, not least being the Troubles in the North during the 70s and 80s and although they figure in his work, he was never an apologist for either side. But he did write of the pain that arose from conflict. His poem, Two Lorries, contrasts Agnew, the coal delivery man, ‘sweet-talking’ Heaney’s mother about going to a film in Magherafelt, a country-side conversation with a man off-loading coal. Years on another lorry would blow a bus station to bits. It is a poignant, pointed story of the ordinary day-to-day life in the North during those difficult, troubled times. The poem appears in the collection The Spirit Level.

He was a man much in demand who had time for people, time for the passing word, giving his autograph at a Reading or sending a card to someone who had written to him without introduction. I was fortunate enough to receive two such cards, with a few words of encouragement some eight years ago.

Poetry is the use of language in a cared-for way, the story told through words and lines shaped and formed with a deliberate, spare intent. As such, poetry can be a time of prayer, for it leads us to a place apart where we can listen to the voice of the Lord through the gift of words that the poet uses.  What a pity that a man of Seamus Heaney’s quality and gift was not asked to help with the 2011  translation of the Mass. I am quite sure we would not have had the clunky, spiritless text that it has been our lot to receive. His sensitivity would have given us a prayerful text.

We communicate with each other in many ways, through images, touch, facial expressions and writing but above all, by the spoken word. During the course of a day we will meet many people face to face and we exchange a casual greeting or engage in a longer, more detailed discussion. In this way we try to tell our story or listen with attention to the stories of others. Words matter.

In the Introduction to the re-printed Theology of Liberation, Gustavo Gutierrez writes “…all language is to some extent a groping for clarity.” How often do we find it difficult to put into words what we actually want to express? So we resort to other means and often, where emotion is deeply involved, we communicate through touch. Words are insufficient to express the depth of our understanding.

Maybe this is why there has been so much concern expressed over the New Translation of the Roman Missal since its introduction on the first Sunday of Advent 2011. Language is indeed a groping for clarity and that has something to do with our experience of the words we use in prayer. Literal translation doesn’t help with appreciation of expression for it can so easily miss the nuance of language. It can also disturb the historical root that feeds our linguistic exchange. Many priests I know express their concern that, with use, it is getting harder not easier for them to pray the Eucharist with the words we now have in the Roman Missal.

It is significant that the then recently formed Association of US priests included this comment:

The resolution on the new English missal asserts that it has “caused disharmony, disruption and discord among many… frustrating rather than inspiring the Eucharistic prayer experience of the Christian faithful, thus leading to less piety and to less ‘full, active and conscious participation,’ and that it ‘has created pastoral problems, in particular because of its cumbersome style, arcane vocabulary, grammatical anomalies, and confusing syntax.’

In the natural evolution of language  we can accommodate change and variety in both structure and vocabulary. You only need to see how much science has contributed to the vocabulary of everyday speech patterns in recent years. Our difficulty is with a translation that involves the use of archaic phrases and structures that serve only to hinder meaning, not enhance it. It does not speak to us in the present tense.

So Gutierrez was right on the mark, language is ‘a groping for clarity’ and we should make every effort not to get in the way and hinder understandable discourse.

There has to be poetry in our prayer, for it opens to us a whole new realm of experience, not just of our forming words with which we offer prayer, but of our being exposed to thought-provoking language that quietens us and makes us listen. Silence is the space between words.

Heaney’s voice, through his written and spoken word has been concluded yet the resonance from his life’s work is far from lost. We are fortunate to have shared a time of passage with a great man, a poet and person of distinction. He spoke to us and for us in a language carefully crafted and finely tuned.

The last poem in his final collection, Human Chain,  is called “A kite for Aibhin”. It concludes with this line:

‘The kite takes off, itself alone, a windfall’ .

“Walk on Air Against Your Better Judgement” are Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney’s parting words to the world taken from his poem The Gravel Walks.  They are etched on his tombstone.

May he now rest in peace.