Poet’s Corner- Seamus Heaney Passes –Take Three

On The Passing Of Seamus Heaney

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman (nee Francis Riley)

A word. He came from the land of poets, porridge, potatoes, publicans, paupers, prayers, pissers and peat, the well-known eight p’s (a ninth, protestants, will be left unspoken). He spoke the mother tongue, nay, the grandmother’s tongue never quite the King’s and then time passing the Queen’s English but that surly brogue that bespoke of ancient sorrows, ancient oppressions, ancient dreams against the hard seas surrounding dear mother. Spoke against the oppressor night language too, some bloody Anglo-Saxon heathen tongue, the straightjacket tongue enforced under penalty of gaol (quaint English word, hey). Spoke of dear green earth mother born of sorrows, sea-borne easy prey for reckless adventurers seeking simple riches and too easy passage to points east and west when the troubles come.

Grandmother, gone to Amerikee, gone to easy sea-borne passage east or west when the troubles came, famine, field rot, rack-rents and imperial decrees, spoke unto death, and maybe beyond the grave too, spoke in brogue too (and not just grandmother in her generation, her Dublin “shawlie” generation transported with lace curtain dreams among the shanty to shanty M Street, Southie and Ashmont Street, Dorchester) defiant against vanilla Americanization, against tarnished green turned to somber brown, against some lost old sod memory of potato fields, endless potato fields, of endless sweated labor, of thatch- roof cottages pulled down in time of famine and hunger, of shabeen fathers toasting one and all at the drop of a hat, of crooked teeth, and, alas of Johnny Larkin stolen away from her by Liverpool and damn Anna O’Brien.

And so DNA-wired her sprawl unto the third generation learned, prosaic and poetic both, the swirl of language, the twisting of a word upon the tongue, the savoring of it, the blarney, insincerely and flatness of it too when needed. The choice Joycean barb or mot although what would she know of Trinity College lads and their chandelier ways. More comfortable with O’Casey plainsong and shawlie backwater tenement remembrances, although what she know of Abbey Theaters and the like. Yet she knew the delight in catching just the right breeze of a phrase, learned from lost love worker poet Johnny Larkin fled to a foreign land, as it passed foam-flecked into some bay (always some bay or inlet present, these were a sea-bound, sea-faring people, if only to diaspora) drifting back across the seas. Across the seas to that good green earth.

And grandmother’s tongue, speak plainly brother, grandmother’s brogue bespoke not just of flailed language, and of savorings, but as repository of other sights, smells and sounds, and ancient clan customs. Plain spoke behind eternal white sheets, pillow cases, towels, underwear (men’s, women’ s hung somewhere, some modest somewhere, hidden from sex-distorted youth and lecherous old men) flying in the back porch triple-decker wind trying to make due for the umpteenth time although one and all can almost see though the hand wrung bleached whiteness of the things. The sound of the trains belching coal dust fumes almost into the back door as they ferry THEM to their busyness.

The smell of oatmeal bread, oatmeal set aside from the daily ration, fresh baked from widow lady Ida’s Bakery (really the downstairs part of her house converted of necessity into a money-producing operation since Mister’s passing), and Friday buns (yes, yes too, Lenten hot-cross reprieve buns I hadn’t forgotten). The no smell of the boiled dinner (non- descript meat, someone’s leavings, yes, yes, potatoes, cabbage and so on, boiled to perdition by the time the damn thing boiled, got boiled down). The smell of whiskies (and Uncle Sean, named after Sean Flynn, whisky breathes) cheap low-shelf whiskies, the cheapest Johnny Walker could bring forth, to make the pennies go farther, and of stouts and ales too when whiskey credits were short. The acrid smell of sweaty barrooms, men only, ladies by invitation, and when the Riley sisters had the thirst that invitation best be forth-coming, the just before last call, just before a whole slew of grizzled fathers, uncles, older brothers crabbed their ways home to some sullen sleep. The smell, after a chaste night or drunken sots, of sunken sunrise Sunday church (Roman Catholic, naturally) all dank and foreboding, faint wisps of wine sand incense left from some past ceremony, and young innocent boys (and girls too but they can speak for themselves, them and their rosary-saying, stations of the cross praying ways all dressed in white, Mary white, to drive young boys crazy, damn them) filled with wonder about hell, heaven and that hope, the high hope of purgatory as a way-station,

Spoke of eight hundred year oppressions, dimmed hovel lights, bloody massacres, and scratching on hard rock earth against foreign slayings. Of 1916, always of the men of ’16, eternally of the men of ’16, of James Connolly and his pipedream workers’ republic above all, who was right and who was wrong when Mick Collins and Harry Boland had it out, and later the boys in the North when they came under British guns and that unnamed unadorned tin can sitting atop the Dublin Grille counter filled with dollars and nobody, no matter what their thirst and no dough, touched that tin under, well, under penalty of death so not touched. Yes, to the boys in the north, and never quite getting the whole thing settled.

Spoke too of shame, of shanty shame, also DNA-etched from time before mist. Of clannish keeping one own counsel, also known as not airing the family’s linen in public unlike those threadbare sheets flailing away on the back porch. Above all spoke of the “shawlie” net-work that ran amok over every tenement block and kept the whole wide world informed, kept young and old in line under the threat of terrible shawlie justice (not until later was it understood as sham). Informed the whole wide world not in the language of the poet by the way. All past now. So too Seamus Heaney passes.