St. Kevin and The Blackbird - Seamus Heaney

Leo Higgins, St. Kevin's Bird

 

 

St. Kevin and the Blackbird

by Seamus Heaney

And then there was St. Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
and Lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

*

And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in Love’s deep river,
‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

 

Clive Hicks Jenkins, St. Kevin and the Blackbird

 

I see it differently. The poem. I think of it as form of survival, inside a cell. Imagining that you must cradle something so fragile and rare. That there is a reason for being there in that lonely place that is bigger than anything you've ever encountered before.

Comments

[Kristen]

"A prayer his body makes entirely"

A stunning observation. But simple. That our choices are our true prayers. That what we choose to value is our true prayer.

Your point is well taken, too. And what kept you alive in your own cell. And perhaps keeps me alive in mine. but which is more real - the cell itself? Or the beauty and sacrifice that we believe in?

[teent]

I can't be as profound as Kristen, but I like it.

[Kristen]

teent - you made me grin.