Doubletake

Seamus Heaney's last words before he passed away last week were "don't be afraid." They were said to his wife, but he may as well have been speaking to all of us. He was a poet who frequently integrated the struggles of ordinary people into his work, and was unflinching in his portrayal of the violence and brutality that their everyday lives often encompassed. Terry Eagleton said of the poet that "When the political is introduced... it is only in the context of what Heaney will or will not say." And he was willing to say quite a bit. This poem -- so vivid and relevant to so many of the horrors being endured today -- is republished in his memory.

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Human beings suffer, 
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols 
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
if there's fire on the mountain
or lightning and storm
and a god speaks from the sky.

That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.