Canticles
for Seamus Heaney 1939-2013
i.
On the radio, classical music from horizon-clear
Martinique.
Mid-October, mid-afternoon, light breezes under the
over-spreading mango,
across envined palmiste, through the abandoned
garden, and you imagine the shadows
lacquered, set. The antique
stone staircase reduced to one forlorn curve and a
few broken flagstones
leans against the shade. In the frame, between grasses, is that an
egret?
Pastoral pauses at Mount Pleasant, above Castries, in
sight of Morne du Don villas,
high palms edging
the drift of hill across its barricade
of blue bent space.
Seamus
Heaney,
phone calls from Stockholm, the graduation of
apprentices,
afternoon softening to pastel, numinous,
over Choc’s procession of bright stones — what
urgent
apocalypse hesitates to interrupt the coralita
flirting among golden crotons?
On the radio, creole music of Malavoi from
Martinique.
ii.
“Places of writing” – Sandymount Strand to Becune
Point
by way of Mossbawn and Chaussée Road
then to Choc and Bellaghy – our corners and yours
where hens squawk under guava trees
and I imagine furrows of Derry in Autumn mists
the blackbird frantic on the skylight of Glanmore –
and Creole violons
you loved with their ancient men
are gathering on Walcott’s surf-splattered verandah
with remembrances of you in lakonmet and moolala
and always, always, joynoise of friends and shac-shac players
tuned with our poteen. Ah Seamus!
We strike our notes and dig to roots of ploughs.
iii.
“Noli timere,” fear not, as we open the roof of
clods
and let him down the mosswalls of Bellaghy
among the scattered cloths and beds
of poets, prophets and men of the palsy
who fall to Compassion in the hammocks of Love
and rise and walk in the grace of Mercy
gratefully.
Harmonies
of harps and violons lift above
Carrauntoohil and Morne Gimie, Castle Dawson and
Castries.
(c) John Robert Lee
This poem is published in Agenda (UK), the Poetry and Opera Issue, dedicated to Seamus Heaney (December 2013)
