Seamus Heaney, poet

Chorus from The Cure at Troy

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 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.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme. 

                     ***

You may have heard President-Elect Joe Biden recite these words, and others by the revered Irish poet Seamus Heaney. (Here is a New Yorker profile of Heaney from last year, and here is one from 2013.) The following clip was aired on Irish television last Saturday evening November 7 after Biden's election was projected:

There is another YouTube version, with the same voice-over, which I believe was used as an ad for Biden's campaign. Here is an article from the Guardian, "Joe Biden's Love for Seamus Heaney Reveals a Soul You Can Trust." Yes indeed. I am so glad to have an intelligent, literate, caring person back in the Oval Office. I just hope he can do good work
. . . which is far from assured, given the obstructionism of the GOP. But I suppose if anyone can make things happen, it'll be Joe Biden.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today's Covid-19 numbers for Monterey County: 12,534, 727, 103—cases hospitalizations, deaths. Up 168, 5, and 2 since yesterday or the day before.

Stay safe. Read some poetry. Here's another by Heaney, one of my all-time favorites, "Postscript."