Happy Feast of (St) Brigid to you!
Or Lughnasa, or Crepe Day, or Veja Diena, or Groundhog Day, or Friday — as you please. Whatever you happen to be observing where you are.
I’d been thinking about posting some poetry, a propos of nothing in particular, and then happened on Anne’s blog call for poetry in honour of St Brigid’s day. Being approximately Catholic, in a hatches, matches and dispatches sort of way, and somewhat Irish, I thought of poets Irish and Catholic, although I know that Brigid is probably about as Catholic as the Christmas tree. I thought of Les Murray (more Ir-ish than Irish, but definitely Catholic); I thought of Seamus Heaney’s wonderful poems about the bog bodies and Viking Dublin; but this was the poem I really wanted. I’m sure Brigid won’t mind sharing the day with another saint.
***
St Kevin and the Blackbird
And then there was St. Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so
One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.
Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,
Is moved to pity: Now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.
*
And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time
From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth
Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river,
‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,
A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird,
And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.
–Seamus Heaney
