Follower

Posted on August 31, 2013 by Stephen

This post has nothing to do with science. Seamus Heany is dead.

I am only begining to process what that means to me. I claim no deep knowledge of his poetry but it has been with me for a long time. I studied his work at school in the late 1970s; I have a few of his books of poems and prose on my shelves; I saw The Cure at Troy at the Tricycle theatre in 1991; I heard him speak once — when I was a postdoc in Boston in 1994.

Several of his poems remain with me. Follower is one I particularly remember. You can hear me read it below (though I do not have Yeats’ talent for declamation). Now that I am a son and a father, the kick at the end is all the more haunting.

 

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One Response to Follower

  1. Philip Strange says:
    September 2, 2013 at 5:32 pm

    Thanks for the reading Stephen. I remember towards the end of my father’s life that the partial reversal of roles left me surprised and uncertain.

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