Miłosz is a great poet and occupies his place in the twentieth-century pantheon because his work satisfies the appetite for seriousness and joy which the word ‘poetry’ awakens in every language. He restores the child’s eternity at the water’s edge, but expresses equally the adult’s dismay that his name is ‘writ on water’. He helps the rest of us to keep faith with those moments when we are suddenly alive to the sweetness of living in the body, and yet he won’t absolve us of the responsibilities and penalties of being part of the life of our times.
To celebrate his achievement, therefore, and to give one more illustration of how things that seem feeble or useless can be transfigured by poetry into lifelines for the spirit, I’ll conclude by quoting the whole of a brief poem written by Miłosz more than forty years ago. The title comes from the first line, ‘What once was great’:
What once was great, now appeared small.
Kingdoms were fading like snow-covered bronze.
What once could smite, now smites no more.
Celestial earths roll on and shine.
Stretched on the grass by the bank of a river,
As long, long ago, I launch my boats of bark.
Weekend Avisen (Denmark), 1999, in Danish translation
About the Author
Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966 and since then he has published poetry, criticism and translations - including Beowulf (1999) - which have established him as one of the leading poets now at work. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. District and Circle (2006) was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2006. Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O’Driscoll, appeared in 2008. In 2009 he received the David Cohen Prize for Literature.
Copyright
This ebook edition published in 2010
Bloomsbury House
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© Seamus Heaney, 2002
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ISBN 978–0–571–26557–2