Yet well aware that here there was no danger,
Only withdrawal, a not unwelcoming
Emptiness, as in a midnight hangarOn an overgrown airfield in late summer.
(from ‘The Door was Open and the House was Dark‘ by Seamus Heaney.
I am on a small ‘self-arranged residency’ these few days and woke up thinking about Seamus Heaney (as well as a few others) and how I missed that sense of looking forward to some new work by him.
This link came through on twitter – a wonderful selection of Seamus Heaney’s work ending in ‘A Kite for Aibhín’ – which is the final poem of ‘Human Chain’. It’s funny there is something about ‘thon bird’ that perplexed the old-ways neighbour in this reading for me – not danger but a not so welcome emptiness.