And then there was St. Kevin and the blackbird

Seamus Heaney, poet and Nobel laureate, died today at 74. I wrote my thesis on Heaney and had the honor of meeting him and hearing him read in 2002. I treasure the book he signed for me and have always worried if I gave him the terrible cold I had at the time.

He was a terrifically down-to-earth poet, rooted in the real details of the earth. Here’s one of my favorite works of his, “St. Kevin and the Blackbird,” which is based on a legend of an Irish saint. (The poem first appeared in his 1996 book, The Spirit Level. You can listen to Heaney read the poem here.) The last lines are achingly beautiful in their simplicity:

 

And then there was St. Kevin and the blackbird.

The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside

His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned up palm is out the window, stiff

As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands

And lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked

Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked

Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand

Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks

Until the young are hatched and fledged and flow.

*

And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,

Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?

Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?

Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?

Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?

Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river,

‘To labor and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely

For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird

And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

 

Rest in peace, honored sir.