Katherine Zappone (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Minister, distinguished guests and fellow Senators, as my friend Senator Fiach Mac Conghail whispered to me earlier it is a healing time for us here this afternoon, especially as we are able to feast on the words of Seamus Heaney and our reflections on them. What an extraordinary experience it is to do this in the presence of Marie, as a way of us offering our deepest sympathy to her. I have just two simple offerings of appreciation in that regard to say about her husband and life partner.

I want to express personally an appreciation for all the times I reached for a poem of his in order to help me understand the meaning of being human, whether it was an event, a time of grief or a time of joy, because I think that was one of his greatest gifts as a poet. About a week after he died, I got word that I was to be given an award. It came out of the blue for me and was something I never expected. Not unlike what I often did, I went to our bedroom which has a few bookshelves. There is a copy of every book of poetry he had published, as my partner, Ann Louise, always bought them as they came out. I reached for one calledThe Spirit Level to try to help me to understand, to get a sense of and experience the meaning of what was happening. I read a poem I had never read before and it was just perfect. While it may not have been my most favourite, it was extraordinary for that moment and it helped me, like many other times, to understand that moment - that dimension of being human in my life. It is actually from the collection, The Spirit Level , which I understand was the one he published after winning the Nobel Prize. It is the last poem in the collection and it is called Postscript:

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open

That is what I felt like that day - big soft buffetings coming at me, catching my heart off guard and blowing it open - and so I want to express a personal appreciation to be able to continue to reach for his poems, as so many people do throughout the world, to help me understand the meaning of being human. They are sacred texts.

I want to offer another simple offering of appreciation. Others have referred to his great contribution to the field of human rights. Senator Bacik mentioned that he was an intellectual giant as well as a poet. I want to remember an extraordinary night for the Irish Human Rights Commission a number of years ago when we invited Seamus to give the yearly lecture on human rights. In fact, I think it was the high point of the decade of the Irish Human Rights Commission. The theme chosen for him to speak to us on was the relevance of poetry in times of societal upheaval and unrest.

Of course, he came to that lecture with a most extraordinary script where he weaved his reflections on other poets' work and really effectively illustrated that our poets have always written in times of turmoil. Just after he quoted from Dante, Shakespeare and Ulysses, he - this extraordinary mind - said:

These, as I say, are the classic voices, all of them fundamental to the evolution and maintenance of a more equitable and civilised world. And in their wake, right down to the present, the work of writers has been crucial in keeping alive conscience and the spirit of freedom not only within the individual psyche but also in the collective mind of nations and of people.

Later in the lecture, he talked about Brodsky, a Russian poet living a bohemian literary life in Leningrad in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He said of him: "Because of his experience of the totalitarian system in action, Brodsky had a deeply ingrained fear not just of political propaganda, but of writing that too ardently supported causes, even good causes." We should all take a little note of that. He reminded us that Brodsky had said that the only defence against evil is complete originality. Seamus went on to reflect that: "Poetry, in his understanding, was the sponsor of that originality, and as a result of that sponsorship poetry was an agent of human liberty and human rights."

By way of personal appreciation for his poetry, I continue to reach for it not only to help me to understand the meaning of being human and acknowledge them as sacred texts, but also to help me on every journey and every path in regard to human rights.