This morning saw the passing of Ireland's most celebrated writer, Seamus Heaney. Emily Fitzell was fortunate enough to have seen one of his last ever public readings in Paris last June, and now shares a composition stylistically inspired by Heaney's work. 

Tarbert, Co. Kerry, January 2007

To Seamus Heaney

Fallow or barren, which is it then,

this haggard piece of land 

which here, beneath the burn remains untilled?

 

“We’ll wait ‘til Spring” -to her he’d say-

“When the land will come alive once more 

and rise anew to make this time their fodder.”

 

For the cattle were long gone from that marred place; 

Eyes dragged downward; down

towards the dirt.

 

But so too were their keepers, now,

Near-stolen by the loam. 

From ashes, ashes, dust, dust- a new crop never came. 

 

Yet here, there still remains a touch

of the old, familiar, acrid, burning turf;

Stealing its way up frozen, breathing nostrils-

 

The sun knelt at the foot of the land, kissed its dirt, and set it there aflame.