Heaney’s Final Poem: French Painting
A poem Seamus Heaney finished 10 days before he died sees the Nobel laureate exploring the quiet beauty of a canal painted by the French artist Gustave Caillebotte, where time is slowed “to a walking paceâ€, and “world stands stillâ€. “Banks of a Canal” has been published as part of a collection of essays, stories and poems by Irish writers inspired by paintings from the National Gallery of Ireland to celebrate the gallery’s 150th anniversary. The poem is, typically for Heaney, rooted in the landscape. (The painting, “Banks of a Canal Near Naples,” from 1872, is pictured.) “Say ‘canal’ and there’s that final vowel/ Towing silence with it, slowing time/ To a walking pace, a path, a whitewashed gleam/ Of dwellings at the skyline./ World stands still,†writes Heaney, who died in August 2013, aged 74. “I know that clay, the damp and dirt of it,†the author of Digging writes, “the grassy zest/ Of verges, the path not narrow but still straight/ Where soul could mind itself or stray beyond.â€
