Seeing Things

In the series I wrote a while ago entitled 'Why Poetry?', I mentioned Seamus Heaney. Despite never having been able to pronounce his name (Shamus Haney? Shamus Heeney? Or, as my 21-year-old self had it, Seemus Heeney?), the man is a hero of mine.

The first time I read one of his poems, it seemed to shimmer in front of me. It achieved the great miracle of language - communication - but did so without lumpy literalism or even mere deftness. I couldn't trace it's images, they were too vivid, too real. It didn't settle for graciousness, but rather achieved grace.

Sentences and paragraphs and phrases - the vital organs of communication - are too easy to dissect. This was writing which escaped my heavy-handed grasp, and landed in my brain instead, promptly filling it with light.

Reading his poetry remains a wonderful experience. From the first moment, it was beautiful, and I had no idea how he did it. As time has gone by, it has remained beautiful - matured and grown in its splendour - but has come slightly more into focus. I can see, now, a bit more definition on the lines, a bit more clarity from the language.

I feel immeasurably privileged to even be practicing the same form. He's scaled Everest; I'm meandering through a valley somewhere.

I mention this now, because a nice few days in York have resulted in me re-finding my copy of Seeing Things on a friend's bookshelf. It's the collection which won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. I didn't know that when I bought it; I had heard his name (I think it was by reading a review of Electric Light in some idly-flicked Sunday newspaper review section). I picked it up from the shelf in Barnes and Noble in some soulless strip-mall in Ohio, and came across this:

And lightening? One meaning of that
Beyond the usual sense of alleviation
Illumination, and so on, is this:

A phenomenal instant when the spirit flares
With pure exhilaration before death -
The good thief in us harking to the promise!

So paint him on Christ's right hand, on a promontory
Scanning empty space, so body-wracked he seems
Untranslatable into the bliss

Ached for at the moon-rim of his forehead
By nail-craters on the dark side of his brain:
This day, thou shalt be with Me in paradise.

It leapt from the page and into my brain. Blew my congealed vision to shards, and I liked the light. It was the first thing of Heaney's that I ever read.

I bought the book on the strength of it, lent it to a friend, and then didn't read it for 4 years. I read it again this morning, loudly to the empty corners of the house. And I am going to read more of it. Oh, yes.