My mother and Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney died yesterday. Thankfully he has left us enough poetry to keep us going for a few years or more. I saw him once in Edinburgh, I think when he delivered the Sorley Maclean lecture in 2002. A lovely man and great story teller to boot. He was very fond of Sorley and translated from Gaelic, Maclean's masterpiece, Hallaig. He reckoned that Sorley should have been awarded the Nobel prize for literature and who could argue with that. I met Sorley a couple of times and had the good fortune of hearing him in Edinburgh and other places doing his readings. I took many non Gaelic speaking friends to hear him, male and female, and they were invariably entranced by the man and his poetry. I visited his house up in Braes in Skye one time and saw him walking about outside but I was too shy to go up to say hello, even though I had spoken to him in Edinburgh. I think I was afraid he would not have remembered me!!! Which undoubtedly he wouldn't have.

My mother didn't of course know Seamus Heaney, just in case any of you thought she was a secret lover of his. She probably never heard of him. But reading his poems often brings her to mind. He seems to have known her without ever having met her. For that I will always be grateful to him and continue to read his poems. I'm not sure whether it's correct to use my when referring to my mother, it's not as if I was an only child, far from it, and maybe the rest of them feel I'm being too possessive, but it's just that saying our mother just does not feel right. Don't know exactly why. Or maybe it's because our seems too competitve as if I'm comparing her to other mothers, of which I'm sure there are many fine examples, but none quite like her. Yes I know I'm rambling, no need to go on about it. I think it's chemo fog.

She used to do her washing every Monday, starting early. In the old days all by hand so it was a full days work, but later when she was persuaded to get a twin tub it took just half a day. There used to be a washing line grand prix in the village to see who got the clothes out on the line first, so she was always on the look out to see if next door had the washing out early. Something  to do with the Calvinistic work ethic maybe, hard work being good for one etc. She usually won the race, until a younger woman came and built a house next door and was up even earlier. We did suspect a certain sloppiness in her washing technique which gave her an edge.

Sometimes we used to help her hang the clothes out, if we were off school and more often help her bring them in once they were dry. I remember the winds howling round the gable end and being blown off my feet by the blasts. I'm reminded of this by Seamus' poem Clearances:

The cool that came off sheets just off the line
Made me think the damp must still be in them
But when I took my corners of the linen
And pulled against her, first straight down the hem
And then diagonally, then flapped and shook
The fabric like a sail in a cross-wind,
They made a dried-out undulating thwack.
So we'd stretch and fold and end up hand to hand
For a split second as if nothing had happened
For nothing had that had not always happened
Beforehand, day by day, just touch and go,
Coming close again by holding back
In moves where I was x and she was o
Inscribed in sheets she'd sewn from ripped-out flour sacks.

I couldn't have said it better myself. So beautiful, so many memories, makes me cry. I could have chosen other verses from this longish poem, but this will do for now. So many other poems, the man was a genius, way and beyond the call of duty.

I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing, from the end of Personal Helicon. I love that phrase to set the darkness echoing....

O charioteers, above your dormant guns,
It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass,
The invisible, untoppled, omphalos.

From The Toome Road. That last word you will probably need to look up, but it's worth the effort. If I rememeber I will tell you about my own personal  1973,Toome Road episode.

I also like Postscript, reminds me of Isle of Lewis and driving all round it many times, and also The Harvest Bow, which he wrote for his father and reminds me of mine.

Thats all for today, all these poems and more can be found online in poemhunter or poetryarchive or other places. Go read....