Heaney’s Grave

Seamus Heaney’s famous line to „walk on air against your better judgement“ has been inscribed as an epitaph on his gravestone.

The quote from his 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech was placed over the Irish poet’s grave in Northern Ireland earlier this week. It was included in a poem called The Gravel Walks.

Heaney, who died almost two years ago aged 74, was the country’s best known contemporary writer. He also created a bestseller from a translation of Beowulf and sold more books in Britain than any other living poet during his lifetime.

He is buried in Bellaghy, Co Derry, his birthplace and the inspiration for much of his early work.

(…)
The line is taken from the final stanza of The Gravel Walks, the full verse of which reads:

So walk on air against your better judgement
Establishing yourself somewhere in between
Those solid batches mixed with grey cement
And a tune called The Gravel Walks that conjures green.

/ Michael McHugh, independent.ie

Pictures here