The coadjutor archbishop of Armagh paid tribute today to Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who died today in Dublin. He was 74.
“We were all quietly ambushed by sadness at the announcement today of the death of Seamus Heaney RIP, Ireland’s foremost poet,” Archbishop Eamon Martin wrote. “Honored on the world stage, our Nobel Laureate was always at heart a quiet Irish man who wrote our story without rhetoric.”
Heaney won the Nobel in 1995.
Archbishop Martin said the poet “observed ordinary country people going about their ordinary lives. His father, his mother, his aunts, his neighbors were Seamus’s quiet heroes as he became ours. Anthologized for primary and secondary students for decades, his poetry excavated the past and found coordinates for the present. He saw history as our story – the story of ordinary humankind.”
“Seamus Heaney was a poet of compassion, a great teacher and a gentle man in every sense," the archbishop added. “My prayers today are with his beloved wife Marie, his sons Christopher, Michael and his daughter Catherine Anne.
“May he rest in peace.
“Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dilis”
