Cerebration

HOW I MET SEAMUS HEANEY: ARUL BENITO GERARD

Arul Benito Gerard is a Graduate student in English Studies at Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. He is presently working on his first collection of poems titled One Plate Poetry Parcel.

 

 

Next Poem:......................................................................................................................... Back to Poetry Index

 

Seamus Heaney was a poem, a required reading more specifically--

Brought in by a man sporting a white beard, a faded shirt, sandal coloured pants:

Heaney was into Unit II.

He wasn’t possibly there for the internals, the teacher was slow.

Seamus Heaney was digging when I met him.

In a classroom fill of hundred people, he did not care to give a glance

Between the black board and the bearded man, who read the lines in a feverish pace

He was there writing on digging, or was it his father.

Another Teacher Came, Clean Shaved; he complained that it was not Seamus but Thomas when we read his name

Seamus Heaney continued and did not complain.

He went everywhere I suppose, from one board room to another,

From the dull lit Xerox shop to the marble floored executive council,

He went, digging, writing.

And He returned one last time, in a room he probably found strangely silent

Coloured Papers evenly spread, strange gestures of minds troubled

He did not peep, nor did he gossip about the new found leaks

He simply opened the cupboard, picked his spade and started digging,

His hands were blue with ink, when we last shook hands.

This was how I met Seamus Heaney.

 

 

 


Next Poem: ........................................................................................................................Back to Poetry Index

Web Graphics and design by Smita Maitra * Background graphic by Kabir Kashyap* concept by Amrita Ghosh * Please read the disclaimer