So Scribblings is three years old… And, three years ago, my very second post had to be about the passing of Seamus Heaney.

As I said then, it was a personal, as well as a literary loss – and today I want to remember him with a poem of his that I love particularly. From Human Chain:

Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof
Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore
And got me up, the whole of me a-patter,
Alive and ticking like an electric fence:
Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
It came and went so unexpectedly
And almost it seemed dangerously,
Returning like an animal to the house,
A courier blast that there and then
Lapsed ordinary. But not ever
After. And not now.

It captures so well the breath-taking little moment when the wind rises… I think this way of turning minute everyday things into beautiful, haunting poetry is what first enthralled me on first reading Seamus Heaney’s poetry…

He is greatly missed.