This is the 46th segment of “Squarings” from Heaney’s collection Seeing Things (1991).

Mountain air from the mountain up behind;
Out front, the end-of-summer, stone-walled fields;
And in a slated house the fiddle going

Like a flat stone skimmed at sunset
Or the irrevocable slipstream of flat earth
Still fleeing behind space.

Was music once a proof of God’s existence?
As long as it admits things beyond measure,
That supposition stands.

So let the ear attend like a farmhouse window
In placid light, where the extravagant
Passed once under full sail into the longed-for.

COMMENTS

---

2 responses to “R.I.P. Seamus Heaney”

1. Ken says:

   08/30/2013 at 12:15 pm

   Thanks for this. Have you heard him reading his translation of Beowulf? It’s just wonderful.

   Reply
2. Georg Fries says:

   09/01/2013 at 11:08 am

   Thank you so much, for the poem and for the picture.

   Reply