Thirsty Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney came to town, today, to give a reading of his poetry at Mead Chapel. I am usually a sluggard about attending events like these, but today I went and did not regret it. It was a wonderful reading - Seamus Heaney turns out to be a gentle man, full of warmth and humor, and his poems are very, very good. Before reading each one, he would give an unobtrusive little explanation of what it meant, for the dimmer stars in our firmament, or perhaps for us computer programmers in the audience, and we appreciated the gesture. Far from being didactic, he gave you the impression of just opening the door a little bit, so that you could push it open yourself, and left that nice feeling of discovery all to you.

There is a lot to like in Seamus Heaney. The best part of the evening was the silent pantomime of the Dixie cups. Two miniscule, shot-glass sized paper cups of water had been placed on the podium in front of the great man ( there had been some fuss about finding a proper glass ), and the laureate didn't see the much large plastic bottle get rushed in and take its place invisibly to his right, just outside his field of vision.

It was obvious the poetry reading was thirsty work, we could all hear his voice rasp, but no one dared raise a whisper. As the reading went on, the poet took smaller and smaller sips from both cups, eventually exhausting both just as he finished the poem about the frozen bird who died of thirst, and the look on his face as he finally stepped back to take a bow and caught sight of that great untouched bottle was a poem in itself.