Today (Aug 30 2013), sadly, the death of Ireland’s leading poet Seamus Heaney was announce.
Heaney was one of the leading international poets of his generation and the first Irishman to win a Nobel Prize (1995) since WB Yeats.
As a tribute to one of Irelands all time literary giants, one of his poems is reproduced here.
See the Guardian (newspaper) tribute here
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‘The door was open and the house was dark’
(In memory of David Hammond)
by Seamus Heaney
[ From Human Chain – published 2010 ]
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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 entered (I remembered 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.
Seamus Heaney 1939 – 2013