Heaney

I love words.  I never cease to be amazed to see how easy they are to play with, to manipulate.
The English alphabet has 26 letters from which all of our English medium literature has been created. All poets, writers, dramatists and public speakers have drawn from the same well to extract just the right letters, to form just the right word in just the right sentence to deliver just the right emotion, challenge or idea desired. A gifted wordsmith has the ability to draw people in, to literally hold them spellbound by the written word. When those words are lifted off the page and spoken, using only the simplest change in cadence or tone to ensure that the melody fits the lyrics, it is possible to engineer the emotions of an audience in the same way in which a skilled conductor can either reduce an audience to tears or lift them heavenward in rapture through the gifted use of a baton. We do well to ensure we understand the difference between inspirational speeches and manipulatory orations.  Once words move from the mind through the lips to the ears they can never be recovered. Choose them well.
Words have carried people into war, encouraged mass genocides, supported prejudiced actions and demeaned those who have no access to voice. They have also lifted the fallen, helped heal the broken hearted and offered forgiveness to those who believed they had committed the unpardonable sin. Words have the ability to both curse and bless.
Today marks 10 years since we learnt about the death of Seamus Heaney. Is it really that long? Like many, I had the privilege to hear him speak and it was a truly amazing experience. I knew the pieces he read of course – the Digging and the Cure of Troy. But they took on deeper truths in the voice of their author. Lest the poet be wrongly elevated beyond their station, in the former poem, Heaney reminds us of the artisan nature of his calling, reflecting that his squat pen rests between his finger and his thumb and that he will dig with it. It is, for me at least, in the latter poem that Heaney speaks most prophetically to the soul of the place he called home, when he reminds us that we continue to torture one another, a condition that cannot be put right by any poem play or song.   Despite this  stark truth and the fact that history teaches us not to hope this side of the grave, Heaney raises our  vision reminding us that we should not give up that hope because once revenge is set aside, it is just possible that a tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history might just rhyme.

What a vision, what a hope, what an opportunity to move beyond revenge. Let’s believe that that other shore is reachable from here.