Horror, heroes, Holohan, Heaney, haircuts and hope

WE have wintered it out as best we could and we deserve our summer. But beware, it comes with the strictest of health warnings.

The past few months have been like nothing experienced in generations and the threat still lingers over us.

Firstly, families all over the world have lost loved ones and in the cruelest way imaginable for the most part dying alone. Saying a final goodbye has changed and to all those who have suffered, our deepest and considered condolences are offered.

From the horror of every school going child in Ireland arriving home on March 12 to signal the end of the school year it kicked off the strange. A new normal they call it and we all have to embrace it and do our bit. Leaving Cert students were drifting in limbo before a final decision was made. Their futures remarkably different now to what they were 12 months ago. Best of luck to all them.

Then we had the heroes across the frontline. Brave workers getting their well-deserved applause at 8 p.m. every Thursday. They still deserve our thanks and admiration even if the applause has stopped.

We became accustomed to Dr. Tony Holohan breaking both bad and good news to us every evening. A man with a depth of knowledge and advice to offer it was with a desperate need for some good news we sat in anticipation. Our own Wicklow representative Simon Harris has soldiered on as Health Minister and he will never experience again, we hope, what he has had to deal with in 2020. Everybody is entitled to their opinion on these two men and in a time when social media use skyrocketed these men have had their knockers. Would any of us do better?

Time was your own now and the running around with places to be and people to see stopped. Everybody wanted to walk, run or cycle. Staying close to home was vital and serene. Many have seen the benefits of a quieter life and grew to enjoy it. Seamus Heaney was quoted in the first address in April by Leo Varadkar and the words from the great Derry bard would have had many reaching for the poetry books again, including myself.

Haircuts were in danger of being driven underground. They too have gotten a return date and when the players proudly donning their club colours and the Covid cuts replaced with top of the range grooming run out on to the perfectly manicured pitches all over the country this week there will be a collective sigh of relief. This is the summer night we see all our friends again as promised. The shadow has passed, the darkness has passed, the sun will shine and will shine all the clearer and while the limits may not exist, we have reached a target.

Only in the past few weeks has the hope really returned. Hope that 2020 may end better than it began but for those grieving loved ones it will always be an annus horribilis.

The words spoken by Varadkar in his first address to the nation back in April were taken from the late great Seamus Heaney. After his death in 2013 the Nobel prize winning poet was afforded a standing ovation at the Kerry v Dublin All-Ireland semi-final. He had played underage football for Castledawson in Derry and but for his career taking another welcome turn he may have played at a higher level. He is buried in Bellaghy in Derry, another GAA stronghold. If ever there was a time to read some of the imagery Heaney put to words in his work it was the past few months.

Another man fond of the GAA and poetry was my English teacher in Coláiste Bhríde, Carnew, Jim Kirwan. No bad footballer himself, he was part of the Dunlavin team that won the Miley Cup in 1977 and also played for Wicklow. Throw in the fact that he was part of the management of numerous championship winning teams at school level in Carnew and with Wicklow and he deserves the respect we always gave him. Another thing he loved was dissecting poetry or prose in his English classes and taking a sentence apart word by word with everybody’s contribution welcomed. He would love to hear the thoughts of a class on this particular offering from Heaney. No doubting the imagery it conveys. Read and enjoy.

Markings

I

We marked the pitch: four jackets for four goalposts,

That was all. The corners and the squares

Were there like longitude and latitude Under the bumpy ground, to be Agreed about or disagreed about When the time came. And then we picked the teams

And crossed the line our called names drew between us.

Youngsters shouting their heads off in a field

As the light died and they kept on playing

Because by then they were playing in their heads

And the actual kicked ball came to them Like a dream heaviness, and their own hard

Breathing in the dark and skids on grass

Sounded like effort in another world ... It was quick and constant, a game that never need

Be played out. some limit had been passed,

There was fleetness, furtherance, tiredness,

In time that was extra, unforeseen and free.

II

You also loved lines pegged out in the garden,

The spade nicking the first straight edge along

The tight white string. Or string stretched perfectly

To make the outline of a house foundation,

Pale timber battens set at right angles For every corner, each freshly sawn new board

Spick and span in the oddly passive grass.

Or the imaginary line straight down A field of grazing, to be ploughed open From the rod stuck in one headrig to the rod

Stuck in the other.

III

All these things entered you

As if they were both the door and what came through it.

They marked the spot, marked time and held it open.

A mower parted the bronze sea of corn. A windlass hauled the centre out of water.

Two men with a cross-cut kept in it swimming

Into a felled beech backwards and forwards

So that the seemed to row the steady earth.

Many will feel with the return of sport and in particular GAA it signals that, however new the normal may now be, it is worth taking hesitant steps towards. The next few weeks certainly will see plenty crossing the lines. Some will do so with concern and who can blame them. Stay safe everyone and enjoy the summer.