Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We honour the man from Bellaghy, Anahorish, St. Columb's in Derry, Queen's in Belfast, Berkeley, Carysfort, Harvard and Oxford, such a distinguished career. The Minister's proposal to celebrate Seamus Heaney will, I am sure, be unanimously accepted by the Houses and people throughout the country. It is a wonderful idea. I wish it every success.

It is an honour to welcome Marie here and to pass on our commiserations to her and Michael, Christopher and Catherine Ann. Dr. Conor Harper, who is in the Visitors' Gallery, along with Professor Brendan Devlin and others celebrated the wonderful funeral mass for Seamus Heaney. Professor Devlin cannot be here because he is visiting a very sick friend in Kilkenny. Also here are, David Hanly, who interviewed Seamus for 20 minutes on "Morning Ireland" when he won the Nobel Prize, Terence Browne, a well known writer on literature and culture and a fellow Derryman, Emmet Kearns, Phil Coulter, Eamon McCann and John Hume from St. Columb's College. What an amazing collection of alumni from that school. My sister Geraldine is in charge of them. Like Professor Devlin, Martin Naughton, the founder of the Seamus Heaney chair of poetry at TCD was unable to attend today. The Minister will have Seamus in the National Library and he will be remembered down the street in TCD. Professor Brendan Kennelly also represents that great tradition of poetry. Others who could not attend include Dr. Edward McParland, pro-chancellor at TCD, and Professor Dan Bradley from Anahorish.

Conor Cruise O'Brien said of Death of a Naturalist,"I have read many pessimistic analyses of Northern Ireland but none has had the bleak conclusiveness of this poem." Seamus Heaney's volume The Spirit Level was described as being tinged with a sense of hopefulness for the passing of conflict. This was recalled when Seamus took his last journey through the main street in Bellaghy to join his parents and brother Christopher and the PSNI saluted his passing coffin. In the early days, Seamus wrote about what a difference it was to be called Seamus or Seán and not Samuel. So much had happened up to the time he attended the wonderful dinner in Dublin Castle with Her Majesty the Queen, former President McAleese and Prince Philip. It was a journey that encapsulated so much of what he had to done to reconcile the traditions of this island.

Seamus Heaney was the president of the Classical Association of Ireland, by whom he is warmly remembered, during which time, as stated by Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell, he dramatised Sophocles into The Cure at Troy, which was run in the city of Derry. In the context of entrepreneurship and cultural development, those were incredible times. Seamus also translated old Irish and Beowulf . His successors at the Classical Association of Ireland include Archbishop Richard Clarke of Armagh and Frank McGuinness, who wrote Observe theSons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme.

Seamus was a great poet. He also wrote beautiful cards and letters, which we will remember. It is great to honour him in this Chamber which was graced by another Nobel Prize winner, W. B. Yeats. This is a marvellous day. Seamus Heaney's generosity and kindness will live on forever and his memory will be preserved by the Minister in the National Library and by TCD. Everybody has read with emotion their favourite poem by Seamus. The following is mine and is celebrated in the museum in Croke Park so that the poet will always be honoured by 81,000 people. The title of the poem is Markings and is about boys playing football in a field in County Derry:

We marked the pitch: four jackets for four goalposts,
That was all. The corners and the squares
Were there like
Under the bumpy ground, to be
Agreed about or disagreed about
When the time came. And then we picked the teams
And crossed the line our called names drew between us.
Youngsters shouting their heads off in a field
As the light died and they kept on playing
Because by then they were playing in their heads
And the actual kicked ball came to them
Like a dream heaviness, and there own hard
Breathing in the dark and skids on grass
Sounded like effort in another world . . .
It was quick and constant, a game that never need
Be played out. Some limit had been passed,
There was , , untiredness
In time that was extra, unforeseen and free.

Thank you so much Seamus. May we all have time that is extra, unforeseen and free.