Seamus Heaney

The Disappearing Island

Once we presumed to found ourselves for good

Between its blue hills and those sandless shores

Where we spent our desperate night in prayer and vigil,

 

Once we had gathered driftwood, made a hearth

And hung our cauldron like a firmament,

The island broke beneath us like a wave.

 

The land sustaining us seemed to hold firm

Only when we embraced it in extremis.

All I believe that happened there was vision.

Seamus Heaney

 Seamus  Heaney

The 1995 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Seamus Heaney's body of work spans four decades and includes more than a dozen collections of poetry, four books of prose, two plays, and a number of translations, including his famous edition of Beowulf.  His latest  books of verse are The Spirit Level (1996), Electric Light (2001), and District and Circle (2006). He lives in Dublin.


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