FBR 90: One of the books . . .

. . . I've asked for this Christmas is Human Chain, the latest collection from Seamus Heaney. For a while in the 1970s and 80s I followed Heaney's work obsessively, obtaining, while in England several times over those years, some first editions and other titles hard to come by here. After taking up the writing of works for children, I drifted away from poetry as one drifts away from any number of good things when family takes center stage.

Lately I've begun to think of Heaney's poetry again because I feel that the drifting has gone on too long and taken me too far. What his work gave me in those earlier years, among a thousand senses and emotions and inspirations, was a place of quiet. The noise that overtakes you in the course of life, when you stand back and simply hear it, is unbearable. In the best of Heaney's work is the silence of contemplation, rumination, even. It itself is an inspiration.

. . . But in a still corner,

braced to its pebble-dashed wall,

heavy, earth-drawn, all mouth and eye,

the sunflower, dreaming umber.

I remember reading an interview he gave, somewhere around the time that those lines from Field Work (1979) came out. When asked what his plans were, he said something to the effect that all he wanted from life was to have time to write, or not write, as he deemed necessary. A lovely sentiment. To write or not write. And the quiet in which to make that decision.

Life here in the workshop has become a noisy thing. People come and go from morning to night. There are oxygen pumps, nebulizers, mattress inflaters, all manner of hospitalic devices. We have a stranger boarding with us now, and an ancient woman living in the dining room. The house is not our house any longer, but you don't curse your lot, because the gods are watching, and there are occasional laughs. But today, and for some days these past weeks, not-writing has been the thing we do most. So we sit and sit and sit . . . dreaming umber.