The world lost a Great One, August 30, 2013.
-Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam-
Be literal a moment. Recollect
Walking out on what had been emptied out
After he died, turning your back and leaving.
That morning tiles were harder, windows colder,
The raindrops on the pane more scourged, the grass
Barer to the sky, more wind-harrowed,
Or so it seemed. The house that he had planned
‘Plain, big, straight, ordinary, you know’,
A paradigm of rigour and correction,
Rebuke to fanciness and shrine to limit,
Stood firmer than ever for its own idea
Like a printed X-ray for the X-rayed body.
–Seamus Heaney