Postscript--Seamus Heaney

(This post, which includes a poem ("Postscript") by Seamus Heaney, ran  originally on August 2, 2013. Heaney died in Dublin on August 30. Check the New York Review for a series of NYRB pieces on the poet, published over the years. The only time I met Heaney was--lucky for me--in his hometown of Derry, in 1992, when he and Ted Hughes together gave a reading at the medieval guild hall. What a privilege to hear the man in that setting.)
Photo courtesy of Paul Lynch's iPhone, in West Clare. Lynch's debut novel Red Sky In Morning comes out in the US in November.
   And speaking of Co. Clare:


Postscript And some time make the time to drive out westInto County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,In September or October, when the windAnd the light are working off each otherSo that the ocean on one side is wild With foam and glitter, and inland among stonesThe surface of a slate-grey lake is litBy the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,Their fully grown headstrong-looking headsTucked or cresting or busy underwater.Useless to think you'll park and capture itMore thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,A hurry through which known and strange things passAs big soft buffetings come at the car sidewaysAnd catch the heart off guard and blow it open.
                                                               ---Seamus Heaney