Remembering Heaney on His Funeral

Today the funeral ceremony of Seamus Heaney was held in his native Bellaghy. Heaney's poetry walks that rough path on the edge of quotidian events and mystical recognitions.  One of my favorite passages in literature comes from his poem Lovers on Aran.

"Did sea define the land or land the sea? 

Each drew new meaning from the waves' collision.
Sea broke on land to full identity."*

And of course my personal favorite for his forwardness and wit is this short piece which was written as an objection to being included in an anthology of British poetry in 1982. He recognized himself as Irish. 

"Be advised my passport's green.

No glass of ours was ever raised

to toast the Queen." 

Seamus Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".

* Lovers on Aran

The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass,
Came dazzling around, into the rocks,
Came glinting, sifting from the Americas

To posess Aran. Or did Aran rush
to throw wide arms of rock around a tide
That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash?

Did sea define the land or land the sea?
Each drew new meaning from the waves' collision.
Sea broke on land to full identity.