My Dear Readers/Poets:
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And I just added the backstories behind Heaney’s haiku to the 'Dark Wings of Night' post:
In The Japanese Effect in Contemporary Irish Poetry, Irene De Angelis gives the backstory behind Heaney's haiku below (p. 30): Heaney wrote it after a small accident when he fell on a icy pavement in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and hurt his knee.
1.1. 87
Dangerous pavements…
but this year I face the ice
with my father’s stick
Below is excerpted from Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney by Dennis O'Driscoll, pp. 212-3.
Helicopters and roadblocks have appeared regularly in your poems, Were you especially aggrieved by British army patrols of that sort?
One half of me would be saying, "They're only a bunch of squaddies doing their job; as individuals, they'd sooner be at home in Leeds or wherever -- they're here because of the IRA's threat to life and limb." But another half rebelled when I'd turn a corner and there were the armoured cars blocking the road, marksmen in the hedge, soldiers in warpaint manning the checkpoint. A lot depended on the manners of the individuals you were dealing with. But the truth of the matter was that they were deployed to keep you in your place, their comrades had shot down people in Derry and they could basically do what they liked. The disgrace of the army comes from the way the higher-ups protected the low-downs. leaving aside the scandal of Bloody Sunday, there were those cases where soldiers who'd shot innocent people and were found guilty of it got a token sentence and then were readmitted, smirking, to the ranks. In cases like that, the contempt for the nationalist people, the contempt for justice, told you what you were dealing with.
At that point you just wanted to say, "To hell with them." And it wasn't the squaddies from Leeds you'd be thinking about, but the Loyalist element in the Scottish regiments and the blond-voiced top brass in the officers' mess. For twenty years and more, every time I drove up from Dublin into Tyrone and Derry, I always felt a kind of generalized menace on the lonelier bits of the roads: you knew the countryside was full of clandestine activity, not just by the paramilitaries on both sides, but by the undercover operations of groups like the SAS. I remember doing a haiku about it:
Springtime in Ulster:
aerials in hedges, squawk
of walkie-talkies
Many thanks to all of you who have helped NeverEnding Story grow in any way.
Chen-ou
Updated:
Seamus Heaney's last words to his wife -- Noli timere. Don't be afraid.
Below is excerpted from
Michael's Essay: Seamus Heaney's last words to his wife
In the course of the funeral tributes, his son Michael told the mourners that a few minutes before he died, the poet sent a message, in Latin, to his wife Marie. It said simply: "Noli Timere --- Don't be afraid."
Poets know about human pain and human fear.
It is part of their mandate to write about our fears, not necessarily to assuage them, but only to describe them accurately so that we know what we are dealing with.
We seem to be steeped in fear these days, marinating in the uncertainty that something dreadful is about to happen.
Not just the existential fear of death and what may or may not come after. Not just extinction.
The old worry about their physical deterioration and loss of dignity and sense and yes, pensions.
The young worry about their future. People with jobs fear losing them. People without a job fear that they will never again enjoy the pleasures of honorable work.
Updated, September 17
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