In 2004 Seamus Heaney, wrote this beautiful imitation of Horace's Odes -many people recognize the terror assault of America on 9/11 here - I see so much more - a young man from the neighborhood is tragically killed, a young mother comes home from a doctor's visit with a diagnosis of breast cancer, a little boy comes in from play to find his mother in a gran mal seizure,a tradesman can no longer make mortgage payments and must give up the home all of his children grew up in, a husband comes home to an empty house - he only cheated once and he was drunk.
Anything Can HappenSeamus Heaney
After Horace, Odes, I, 34
Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter
Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head
Before he hurls the lightning? Well just now
He galloped his thunder cart and his horses
Across a clear blue sky.. It shook the earth
and the clogged underearth, the River Styx,
the winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.
Anything can happen, the tallest towers
Be overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune
Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one,
Setting it down bleading on the next.
Ground gives. The heaven's weight
Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle lid.
Capstones shift. Nothing resettles right.
Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.
1 comment:
A poignant post. Heaney himself said it was more about the chaos he knew would be unleashed by the rabid avengers.As George Galloway said a few years ago - '9-11 did not come out of a clear blue sky'.
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