Street Seen: Scaffolding – A Subway Sign Evoking an Era
For a short time, not so long ago, an amazing moment of beauty appeared on NYC Subway Cars. I remember looking up and seeing the occasional poetry graphic displayed on cars in, I think, all the multiple lines of the underground system. It delivered a moment that made even the most challenging trip turn from a trial to a treat.
The poem was called, simply “Scaffolding.” For my money, it is one of the loveliest poems ever to capture a story line that draws the reader through the small challenges and great triumphs that define a lifetime pathway through the ups and downs of committed love.
The signature of the poem was “Seamus Heaney.” That name not only calls out one of the great figures of Irish letters but a new center honoring him and an entire era that was the seed bed of him and an impressive gathering of eagles it produced.
The recently deceased (2013) Nobel Laureate chose his final resting place in Bellaghy, at a midpoint between Belfast and Derry. The recently opened the Seamus Heaney Home Place there invites visitors to see the life and land that inspired him. Seamus Heaney’s works include a masterly translation of Beowulf and the outpouring of poetry, plays, essays and translations throughout his life culminating in 1995 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
A short film narrated by Liam Neeson honors the man, the voice and the spirit Neeson credits with inspiring his career as an actor.
To see him in another context is to place him among many of his contemporaries who were undergraduates in a rich era for St. Columb’s College in Derry that gave the world not only Heaney but also the Peacemaker John Hume, Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) statesman responsible for the continuing initiative that set his home land on a new era away from Ireland’s troubled past. Hume, for example, is credited for the insistence that peace is and must be recognized as a process, not one single event. Hume’s wife Pat honors his trusted SDLP colleague Seamus Mallon as “a rock of honesty and courage” championing non-violence in her closing chapter of John Hume: Irish Peacemaker.
The playwright Brian Friel whose Dancing at Lughnasa enthralled Broadway was another luminary of these contemporaries’ times. Friel penned what I shall likely always call the most beautiful love scene of the English-speaking theater in his play Translations. The moment occurs between a young woman whose language is Irish and the young British soldier whose language is English and who has been posted to the Island to carry out the assignment of translating the place names of the area from their traditional Irish to their English equivalents. Having met the local beauty, he speaks of his love in what is essentially a foreign language to her. When she fastens on one of his words their two separate worlds converge as they pledge their love for one another in words neither fully understands. They fasten on the few words they share in common. The young soldier pledges that he will love his treasured Maire “forever.” And she seizes on that single word and speaks it back to him in three labored syllables, For…ev…er” Friel captures the poignant link that unites the young people whom history and culture have failed to separate. And with playwright’s genius he makes his audience believe that they are speaking a common language.
Friel and Heaney were just two of a remarkable gathering of eagles that were the classmates in a singular season of genius. The composer-performer Phil Coulter walked the halls of that college at that time, as did the stateman and voice for civilized dialogue between opponents, Seamus Mallon.
But back to Seamus Heaney and the poem that introduced him and the unique love of his life to millions of New York City subway riders. It speaks of the lifetime of building a structure in which love can flourish. The scaffolding is scrupulously maintained so that the finished structure will stand firm when the scaffolding itself is dismantled. The poem ends with these words:
So, if, my dear, there sometimes seems to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.
Moments before his death in Dublin in 2013, Heaney sent a two-word text message in the Latin he cherished to his wife: It read, “Noli timere”, the Latin for “Don’t be afraid.”
You can experience Heaney’s unique insights for yourself in a new selection of 100 Poems published this year by Faber & Faber and announced at Home Place in Bellaghy on June 28.
Opening photo of Derry, Northern Ireland Peace Bridge | BigStock by Shutterstock