{"id":70185,"date":"2013-08-30T07:35:25","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T11:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=70185"},"modified":"2020-11-16T09:18:18","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T14:18:18","slug":"r-i-p-seamus-heaney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=70185","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Seamus Heaney"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"heaney_seamus\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nJean and I went to visit Siobhan in Ireland. Siobhan was in school, so Jean and I rented a car and drove across the country to Galway, and other Western points. On the way, we pulled off the road to go visit Clonmacnoise, a crumbling monastery by a river. We had gone there as kids. It was November, so there was nobody there but us. We wandered around in the frosty air, along the slopes with tilting lichened Celtic crosses, and ruins. The river there is low and reflective, so the sky is reflected in the water in often dizzying and strange ways. It’s a magical place. There is a legend about Clonmacnoise. During the medieval dark times, when it was a working monastery filled with monks, a ship came along, only it wasn’t floating in the river, it was floating in the air. It stopped above the monastery. The monks were at prayer. The anchor, coming down through the space above, had got caught, and a sailor slid down the rope to free it. He lay there, gasping. He couldn’t breathe “down there”. The monks helped him back up the rope, and the ship floated off in the air. If you go to Clonmacnoise, and you see the effects of light and water and air, you can see how such a legend would be born. Or maybe it really happened. <\/p>\n

\n\"Clonmacnoise_Rundturm_Shannon\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I came home to the States, I was telling Dad about our trip to Ireland, and I mentioned our magical stop-off at Clonmacnoise and how good it was to see it again after all those years. I told him how quiet it was, and how, on that wintry day, it was easy to imagine a ship floating by in the air.<\/p>\n

Dad got up and went to his bookshelf. He pulled down a book. He flipped through it until he found what he wanted. Then he read out loud to me this stunning poem by Seamus Heaney:<\/p>\n

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
\nWere all at prayers inside the oratory
\nA ship appeared above them in the air.<\/p>\n

The anchor dragged along behind so deep
\nIt hooked itself into the altar rails
\nAnd then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,<\/p>\n

A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
\nAnd struggled to release it. But in vain.
\n\u2018This man can\u2019t bear our life here and will drown,\u2019<\/p>\n

The abbot said, \u2018unless we help him.\u2019 So
\nThey did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
\nOut of the marvellous as he had known it.<\/p>\n

Every collection of Seamus Heaney’s work that I own, the poems, the essays, were given to me by my father. <\/p>\n

When I read Heaney’s poems, I hear my Dad’s voice.<\/p>\n

This is devastating news. He was so important in our family. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean and I went to visit Siobhan in Ireland. Siobhan was in school, so Jean and I rented a car and drove across the country to Galway, and other Western points. On the way, we pulled off the road to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,9],"tags":[35,2629,160,237],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70185"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127971,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70185\/revisions\/127971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}