SOME WORDS ON SEAMUS HEANEY

My grade eleven english teacher, Mr. Aitkens -- the only teacher whom I remember with any degree of fondness from my grade school years -- had us read Beowulf as translated by Seamus Heaney. Our school wouldn't pay for multiple copies of the book, so Mr. Aitkens photocopied his edition thirty or however many times and we all spent a class cutting and folding and binding together our own books. I've had a fondness for Heaney ever since then. Just last night I found a copy of his recent book, Human Chain. Here's something from it: 

'The door was open and the house was dark'

                in memory of David Hammond

The door was open and the house was dark

Wherefore I called his name, although I knew

The answer this time would be silence

That kept me standing listening while it grew

Backwards and down and out into the street

Where as I'd entered (I remember now)

The streetlamps too were out. 

I felt, for the first time there and then, a stranger,

Intruder almost, wanting to take flight

Yet well aware that here there was no danger,

Only withdrawal, a not unwelcoming 

Emptiness, as in a midnight hangar

On an overgrown airfield in late summer.


*it's kind of nice to play that Herzog clip down below at the same time as reading this poem!