Music & Air

I decided to choose this post's poem by going for whatever was on the 76th page of the 9th book of poetry on my shelf. Pretty random selection, but the result is good. Could it really have been bad, though? Anyway, this is from Seamus Heaney's book "Door into the Dark." If you love poetry and music, this one should grab you.


The Given Note

On the most westerly Blasket
In a dry-stone hut
He got this air out of the night.

Strange noises were heard
By others who followed, bits of a tune
Coming in on loud weather

Though nothing like melody.
He blamed their fingers and ear
As unpractised, their fiddling easy

For he had gone alone into the island
And brought back the whole thing.
The house throbbed like his full violin.

So whether he calls it spirit music
Or not, I don't care. He took it
Out of wind off mid-Atlantic.

Still he maintains, from nowhere.
It comes off the bow gravely,
Rephrases itself into the air.


from "Poems: 1965-1975"

The picture is a view of the Atlantic from Doolin, Ireland from my 2004 trip:

"In a pub at the edge of the world, I eat a bowl of seafood chowder. The Atlantic ocean air, whisking inside with every swing of the door, seeping in window-frame cracks, stirs through the trings of an Irish man's guitar. Low light reddens curls of his thin brown hair, and old men planted on barstools hold their dark pints of Guinness mid-air. We, a bunch of college students from America, stop our jabbering and listen in respectful and curious silence as gravelly voices join the musician for the chorus of a ballad all of them know."