In Memoriam: Seamus Heaney, August 30, 2013
By “Bard” Eucewelis
He disappeared in summer’s teeming life:
the streams were shallow and the airports full;
the mercury rose in the giving day;
while pigeons shat upon his pub-lic art.
Thermometers recorded numbered marks
in fahrenheit or centigrade degrees.
Although heat is a matter of degrees,
wolves combed the beaches chock-a-block with life,
in search of shapely, gorgeous, tempting marks;
their smart phones and their calendars were full.
From sandy strands he was kept from his art,
while burning tongues were active all the day.
For him, it was his final, sunny day;
already mind had left him by degrees.
The only thing remaining was his art.
The thing it had been emptied of was life.
Time’s silent citadel had filled him full;
and his admirers became book marks.
A dead man’s words sting like stock market marks.
Come what come may, time drives the calmest day,
and spares no body, brawn or beautiful.
It loves all kinds, both titles and degrees,
as well as those possessing naught but life,
who never came to show new shores of art.
And yet, there is importance in an art
that leaves behind its prints and weathered marks;
for it can spare a memory of life,
perhaps some hundreds, thinking of this day,
an honoured guest at sixty-six degrees,
now laid to rest in earth; though filled, less full.
But what is left is hardly wonderful,
the sandy, rippling, ribbons of his art,
returning to th’ eternal by degrees,
caught in the tidal prison of his day,
the final glowing, golden hours of life,
a spattering of words in unfirm arcs.
What counted was the life, not poems full
of words, here for a day, that had to part
along with all remarks and pedigrees.
“Bard” Eucewelis is a bit of a mystery to us, but there’s something familiar about him …
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