Seamus Heaney is dead

The great poet Seamus Heaney has died.

Heaney's work is truly extraordinary. If you can read "Digging" without feeling moved, well, then you're not human.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance hear him read in person. He was scheduled to read at Southern Illinois University in the spring of 1995, but a few weeks before the appearance, he won the Nobel Prize and had to cancel because of a sudden crush of commitments. By the time he made his rescheduled reading a year or so later, I'd graduated.

Do some digging yourself with some of his poems.

And hoist a pint for Seamus tonight.

Slainte go saol agat,
Bean ar do mhian agat.
Leanbh gach blian agat,
is solas na bhflaitheas tareis antsail seo agat.

"Health for life to you,
A wife of your choice to you,
Land without rent to you,
A child every year to you,
And the light of heaven after this world for you."