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DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

Miss Golightly

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,312
Location
Dublin, Ireland
Seamus Heaney - Poet & Nobel Laureate has died aged 74:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0830/471228-seamus-heaney/

I don't care for poetry as a rule (there are a few exceptions) but I remember this poem from when I was in Primary School as it really stood out & stayed with me all these years:


Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney

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.
 

W-D Forties

Practically Family
Messages
684
Location
England
I'm ashamed to say that I knew next to nothing about Seamus Heaney, as he wasn't on the English curriculum when I was at school, but my, that's a beautiful and sad piece of poetry. Made me cry.
 

Miss Golightly

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,312
Location
Dublin, Ireland
I'm ashamed to say that I knew next to nothing about Seamus Heaney, as he wasn't on the English curriculum when I was at school, but my, that's a beautiful and sad piece of poetry. Made me cry.

Isn't it a magnificent poem? What I love about it is that you can see the events unfolding - it's not opaque or wordy - the last couple of lines just floor me.

He has another poem about drowning kittens but I don't want to ruin your Sunday!!!!!!
 

RBH

Bartender
The late AC Lyles with his Golden Spur Award. [for Red Tomahawk 1967]
With Howard Keel, Joan Caulfield, Scott Brady and Brodwick Crawford


keel-crawford-lyles-award_opt.jpg
 

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