Seamus Heaney (1939 - )

                                       
                                                                
                                                                


From "Diary of One Who Vanished"
a new version of "A Song Cycle" by Leos Janacek
of "Poems" by Ozef Kalda
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux 2000
"Diary of One Who Vanished"

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) : "Sonnet XLVII"

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,

And each doth good turns now unto the other:

When that mine eye is famish'd for a look,

Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,

With my love's picture then my eye doth feast

And to the painted banquet bids my heart;

Another time mine eye is my heart's guest

And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:

So, either by thy picture or my love,

Thy self away, are present still with me:

For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,

And I am still with them, and they with thee;

      Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
      
      Awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight.


From "Sonnets"
Shakespeare's Sonnets



Dedicated to my grandfather Mariano.

W. S. Merwin (1927- ) : "Note"

Remember how the naked soul
comes to language and at once knows
loss and distance and believing

then for a time it will not run
with its old freedom
like a light innocent of measure
but will hearken to how
one story becomes another
and will try to tell where
they have emerged from
and where they are heading
as though they were its own legend
running before the words and beyond them
naked and never looking back

through the noise of questions



From "The Shadow of Sirius"
Copper Canyon Press 2009
The Shadow of Sirius