Seamus Heaney Quotes

Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer (1939–2013)

Seamus Justin Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright, and translator. In 1995 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Alternative Names: Seamus Justin Heaney

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Here is the great paradox of poetry and of the imaginative arts in general. Faced with the brutality of the historical onslaught, they are practically useless. Yet they verify our singularity, they strike out the ore of self which lies at the base of every individuated life. In one sense the efficacy of poetry is nil – no lyric has ever stopped a tank. In another sense it is unlimited. It is like the writing in the sand in the face of which accusers and accused are left speechless and renewed.

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

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.

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 or endured.

God is a foreman with certain definite views
Who orders life in shifts of work and leisure.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.