Death of Seamus Heaney

A great poet for certain. A great man I'm not so sure. He never took much of a principled stance during the entire length of the long war. Even at Bloody Sunday, his reaction was muted. I believed at the time and still do that he had one eye on the reactions of his English friends and sponsors/publishers. The BBC invites would have dried up all too quickly If Heaney had spoken out. I never really forgave him for that. More recent interviews show him to have been a moderate on Irish self-determination to the point of almost being a Unionist. He and Conor Cruise O'Brien would have been fine dinner companions. His interview comments also betrayed someone obsessed with the 'business' of being a poet: the lecture tours and, particularly, the awards circuit. But the poetry cannot be faulted and I mourn his death. 

It is Number 5, New Row, Land of the Dead,
Where grandfather is rising from his place
With spectacles pushed back on a clean bald head
To welcome a bewildered homing daughter
Before she even knocks. 'What's this? What's this?'
And they sit down in the shining room together.

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 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.

(from 'Clearances')