Eamonn Coghlan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Marie and friends to the Seanad and will recite The Forge by Seamus Heaney:

All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

They say the arts, music, sports and literature transcend society. They unite people as one and bring together nations of great political divide. It is not often that the announcement of the death of a literary figure can bring a country to a standstill but such was the case when the sudden death of Seamus Heaney was announced. No one was prepared for such a loss. The familial connection and love that we felt for Seamus reverberated around the world as witnessed by the flood of heart-felt tributes.

Seamus Heaney, who died on 30 August at the age of 74, won the Nobel Prize for literature "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past," according to the citation on the Nobel Prize official website. Seamus was a visiting speaker on a number of occasions at my alma mater, Villanova University in Pennsylvania, the first time in 1988 and the fourth and last visit in April 2010 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the university's Heimbold chair. Seamus was always generous with his time.

Much of Seamus's poetry was grounded in his sense of place. He wrote with such nostalgia about his rural upbringing in County Derry in poems like The Forge and Harvest Bow. Living in the North, much of Seamus's poetry was influenced by what became euphemistically known as the Troubles. He was very aware of the lives sacrificed in the name of Ireland, and brilliantly made the connection with other lives sacrificed to the land 2,000 years earlier in his poems Bogland and The Tollund Man. It was no doubt his awareness of living in fear that resulted in Seamus being able to empathise poetically with conflict throughout the world.

While his Northcollection was strongly political, this was just one aspect to his poetry. The obvious love he felt for his parents is deeply touching in poems like Digging and The Pitchfork, inspired by his father Patrick, while the special relationship he shared with his mother Margaret is beautifully portrayed in Clearances and Mossbawn, among others.

We might assume that such talent and achievement would result in a proud, accomplished figure but this was the most surprising and ironic aspect of the man. There is perhaps nothing in life more disarming than listening to an interview with Seamus Heaney. Rarely focusing attention on himself, the warmth and generosity with which he praised others was truly humbling to witness. I particularly love the story of his reaction to winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. Far from expecting such an honour, he was out of the country on holiday and it took some time to contact him with the news. When his family told him that he had won he simply replied, "Well fair play to the Swedes."

Seamus was well aware that sometimes simplicity is best. I wonder if he could possibly know, in these uncertain times of change and upheaval, how comforting his final words would be to all of us. Although texted privately to his beloved wife, Marie, we all felt the enormous power of his last written words: "Noli timere." Don't be afraid. Seamus, a chairde, ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam.