Your weekly poem, May 5: “The Fields of Light” by Seamus Heaney
A poem selected by our director Nicholas Allen, Baldwin Professor in Humanities
Dear friends,
I nearly veered this week from poetry, a little at a loss of how to keep going when one day leads into another, weeks now into months. I have kept for these lean times some poems in mind, especially as summer comes and my imagination turns to home. I have always loved, and always will, the June time in Ireland, the long evenings of the half-light, the ditches blooming in flower, the return to family, friends and familiar places. That won’t happen this year, for the first time in all the years we have lived in America. We have much to be thankful for, and there is no complaint in the face of the trials of so many others. But the desire for home remains, as do the dreams of summer.
All this made me think of two poems that I’d like to share with you, one this week and one next. They are both versions of Virgil’s Aeneid by Seamus Heaney, which he wrote later in his life. The Aeneid is a founding fiction of Rome, which Heaney revered for its descriptions of nature and which you can read in his rendering of the Elysium in “The Fields of Light.” The setting is Aeneas’s journey to the underworld to seek the shade of his father and so hear an augur of the future of Rome. The water-meadows of Heaney’s version are however all Co. Derry, the cadence of Virgil’s lines swung gently to the northern countryside in mid-summer. They remind us too that home is a state of mind, in gentle repose by running streams, the greater peace found in fellowship.
If you like we can continue after that to the hall of Heorot and the shield-bearing Danes in Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. But that is for another day and for now we should hoard our treasures like old King Hrothgar.
I send you every good wish for the week to come,
Nicholas
Seamus Heaney
“The Fields of Light”
Aeneid VI, 638-78
They emerged into happy vistas and the green welcome
Of the Groves of the Fortunate Ones who dwell in joy.
Here a more spacious air sheds crystalline light
Upon the land, they enjoy their own sun here
And their own stars – some at their exercises
On the grass, some competing in earnest, wrestling
On the tawny sand; others are dancing dances
And lilting tunes, Orpheus among them
In his long musician’s robe, keeping time,
Plucking his seven notes from the seven-stringed lyre
Now with his fingers, now with an ivory plectrum.
Here too were members of Teucer’s ancient stock,
That noblest of families, magnificent heroes
Born in better days – Illus and Assaracus
And Dardanus who founded Troy. Aeneas gazed
In wonder at their armour and the chariots beside them
Standing idle, their spears stuck upright in the ground
And the horses loosed out, free to graze the plain
Anywhere they liked. The pride they took in armour
And chariots when alive, the attention they paid
To their glossy well-kempt horses, it is still the same
Now they have gone away under the earth. Others too
He sees on every side, feasting in lush meadows
Or singing songs together to Apollo
Deep in a laurel grove, where the Eridanus
Courses through on its way to the earth above.
Here was a band of those who suffered wounds
Fighting for their country; those who lived the pure life
Of the priest; those who were dedicated poets
And satisfied the god by worthwhile work; others still
Whose discoveries improved our arts or ease, and those
Remembered for a life spent serving others –
All of them with headbands white as snow
Tied round their brows. These the Sibyl now addressed
As they bustled close around her, Musaeus
In particular, outstanding at the centre of the crowd,
Looked up to, towering head and shoulders
Over them. ‘Tell us, happy spirits,’ she began,
‘And you, the best of the poets, tell us
Where does Anchises dwell, what is his district?
For his sake we have crossed the mighty waterways
And are here.’ Her question the great hero answered
Briefly: ‘None of us has one definite home place.
We live in the shade of woods, bed down on riverbanks
And on meadowland in earshot of running streams.
But you, if heart is set upon it, ascend this ridge
And I’ll direct you soon on an easy path.’ He spoke,
Walked on ahead and opened his arms wide
Above the fields of light.