Human Chain, By Seamus Heaney
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Typically, beautifully, the 12-line title poem of a volume that embodies Heaney's return from illness begins with a "close-up" of aid workers on TV swinging "bags of meal" one to another as soldiers fire.
It drops into memory and the "one-two upswing" followed by "stoop and drag and drain" of loading grain onto a farm trailer. These human types of "letting go" "will not come again./ Or it will, once. And for all."
So much in so little, with even punctuation hard at work. It sounds superfluous to praise the poet on this form. Just read him.
Here, images of limbos and transitions, crossings and afterlives – some in his haunting variations on Virgil – both mark and close the distance between people, generations, eras and, profoundly, life and death.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments