The sound of bagpipes in the distance drifts in through the open window of the yellow cab as I head down Broadway to New York University. It’s the first real spring day after a long winter and the bagpipes seem to herald the return of warmer weather, and the renewal of the spirit that spring brings.
How does one express the effect that that ancient sound has when it reaches the ear of an expatriate in the middle of tall buildings and hurrying crowds? It’s a gift to the soul — a gift from home. A gift that says that the umbilical cord stretches far and wide but is still connected, and the ache and pull of Ireland and its people will always be here — no matter how many miles are traveled, no matter how we reshape ourselves.
The bagpipes tonight are for Seamus Heaney — they are welcoming our Nobel Laureate who is in town for two sold-out readings at Manhattan theaters. But tonight he will give of himself out of the generosity of his heart to help the cause of Irish Studies in the U.S., and most particularly the program at New York University.
As it turns out it was an evening that will long be remembered — a celebration of the very best kind — of poetry and conversation that both renew the spirit and make one proud of the achievements of one of our own. And an evening that also brings home to us the extraordinary gift that Loretta Brennan and her Jewish husband Lewis Glucksman have given to the Irish of this city in their gift of Ireland House to NYU.
After the introduction by L. Jay Oliva, the president of the university — an Irish speaker whose love of his mother’s country is obvious — and the readings by Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson, a lone Uileann piper, Jerry Sullivan, pipes in our Nobel Laureate to the tune of “O’Neill’s March,” and Seamus Heaney responds in kind with a poem for his brother Hugh: The piper coming from far away is you/With a whitewash brush for a sporran/ Wobbling around you….
It’s a poem called “Keeping Going,” a poem about childhood and the loss of innocence and the harsh reality of life for the poet’s brother who stays on “where it happens,” in the North of Ireland.
And it is Heaney’s gift, as demonstrated in this poem and others, that he can take the bottled-up pain of our race and release it, as the wind produced by the pressure of the arm of the piper releases the notes into the air.
His poetry, too, like the sound of the pipes, is the umbilical cord that carries nourishment to us across the miles, connecting us up again to the womb of our mother country and our beginnings. Through him we hear our ancestral voices telling us the way it was. As if he has been sent from the gods to reach back into the boglands and dig up the buried treasure and pain of our past, and release it.
He gives voice to the ancients just as the monks at Glendalough preserved the old manuscripts, he translates the Greek for us and gives us access to the wider world by bringing us his play The Cure at Troy. As, too, he brings us the pure joy of picking blackberries, in a poem set in rural Ireland which also teaches us that joy can’t be stored, just as the blackberries left aside to be enjoyed later on are attacked by fungus and die.
We thank you, Seamus Heaney, for gifts you bring to us and for the understanding of our race that you now bring to the world in your far-reaching role as Nobel Laureate, and for showing us the universal bond we share with all people, for poetry has no borders. You are the keeper of our memories, you mine them and give them back to us, and like the notes from the piper they bring us solace.
And so, dear reader, we hope you enjoy our interview with Seamus Heaney, and the other features in this issue. I urge you to explore beyond our few pages which just touch on the great well of our culture.
If you want to reach the soul of Ireland don’t just read about Seamus Heaney, read his poetry. Read about Newgrange, and try to visit. Listen to the music of Eileen Ivers, get the Riverdance CD and video tape, have a dinner party and cook a salmon and tell the tale of Fionn MacCumaill and the tree of life. Find out how you can support your local Irish Studies program. And look towards Grosse Ile, that graveyard of our Famine ancestors, for who else will tell their story, and release the pain of the past?
It will all lead to a renewal of the spirit and a better understanding of who you are.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the May/June 1996 issue of Irish America. ⬥
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