I misinformed myself about Seamus Heaney’s part in Haughey’s funeral.
It turned out to be Brendan Kennelly, the poet who wrote “Cromwell“, who was present and read “On Raglan Road” by Patrick Kavanagh at the funeral.
Aine Ui Laoithe read “The Given Note” by Seamus Heaney:
“On the most westerly Blasket
In a dry-stone hut
He got this air out of the night.
Strange noises were heard
By others who followed, bits of a tune
Coming in on loud weather
Though nothing like melody.
He blamed their fingers and ear
As unpractised, their fiddling easy
For he had gone alone into the island
And brought back the whole thing.
The house throbbed like his full violin.
So whether he calls it spirit music
Or not, I don’t care. He took it
Out of wind off mid-Atlantic.
Still he maintains, from nowhere.
It comes off the bow gravely,
Rephrases itself into the air.”
What an image of Charlie going to the Blasket and bringing back the air.
So no major poet has yet written a poem on the death of Charlie.
I was on the road from Waterford back to Cork on Friday. I had difficulty tuning in to RTE One radio because the reception kept coming and going. The funeral was broadcast live. I wanted to hear the music and the poetry. Charlie designed his own funeral, as my uncle Hugh did. And I like the idea of designing your own funeral, leaving a sense of ceremony behind you…
As far as I was concerned, all the speeches were going to be predictable self-seeking. The politicians and the family striving to glorify the memory of the dead for the sake of the living. But I was keen to see the performance, Birtie’s oration over the grave of the “Boss”.
I also wanted to see what Youghal Golf Club was like.
So I murdered two birds with one bomb, stopped to walk a bit of the course and see the man in action.
In the bar was a television tuned to the service.
The soldiers carried the coffin decorated by the tricolour. They folded the flag in what the RTE voice described as the most delicately symbolic part of the proceedings. (The voice used a different phrase than “delicately symbolic”, perhaps it was “moving” - whatever it was, it struck me as a strange thing to say.) The coffin received some prayers from Cathal’s brother. (For some weird reason, Charlie’s brother kept calling him “Cathal”.) And then the Taoiseach came forward, dressed in black suit, black tie and white shirt.
Birtie did the business, did the oration and it took about 15 minutes.
I was the only person who watched it.
There were others in the bar. There were plenty of golfers sitting round outside in the sun. Not one other person budged to watch or listen to the Taoiseach’s oration over Charles J Haughey. Towards the end, the golf professional came up to me and asked if I’d mind if they switched over to watch the US Open golf? I said it would be over in a few minutes and he went away, didn’t even glance up at the proceedings.
I was surprised.
I didn’t expect everyone to be interested in Haughey’s funeral and the oration. But I did think some would be sufficiently interested to invest a few minutes on that historic occasion. It was as if the king was dead and already forgotten. That was when I realised that Charlie will not be remembered with any fondness. Many will remember him as an embarrassment. But judging by the number of people who turned out to line the streets for his funeral, he will become a blank space in the history of Ireland.
The Sunday Independent features a reflection which contrasts the turn out for Charlie’s funeral with the large turn out in Cork when Jack Lynch died. On this occasion, the government made preparations for a crowd of 25,000. 1,000 came.
Time to move on indeed. Of course, golfers are not typical of the plain people of Ireland and I am foolish to generalise from Youghal Golf Club, and one professional.
But what of the artistic side of the funeral?
The Mass booklet quoted Emerson:
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better… to know even one life breathered easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded“.
I suppose Charlie wished his life to be seen in this way.
Birtie said:
“Charles Haughey died on the 13th of June, the date that William Butler Yeats was born. Yeats was a great man. He was also a complex man. And so was Haughey.
Yeats was impatient at the progress of our country. And so was Charlie. And when Yeats wrote ‘I am of Ireland’, he could not have painted a better description of Charles J Haughey.”
This sent me in search of Yeats‘ ‘I am of Ireland‘, the name of which reminded me of Walt Whitman’s “I hear America sing” and “Song of Myself“.
‘I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity,
Come dance with me in Ireland.’
One man, one man alone
In that outlandish gear,
One solitary man
Of all that rambled there
Had turned his stately head.
‘That is a long way off,
And time runs on,’ he said,
‘And the night grows rough.’
‘I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.’
‘The fiddlers are all thumbs,
Or the fiddle-string accursed,
The drums and the kettledrums
And the trumpets all are burst,
And the trombone,’ cried he,
‘The trumpet and trombone,’
And cocked a malicious eye,
‘But time runs on, runs on.’
I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
“Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.’
So, was Birtie painting a picture of Haughey as the one solitary stately man? Or implying obliquely that Haughey had burst the instruments of music? Or that Haughey had a strong feminine side, compassionately calling for people to dance in Ireland as an act of charity? Or what?
To quote a poet, and to encourage people to associate the dead man with the ambiguities of a poet, is political art. Especially when all you actually quote is the name of the poem, “I am of Ireland“. I, Haughey am of Ireland… My foibles are of Ireland…
Birtie’s quote from Roosevelt, which he said spoke to the essence of Mr Haughey’s spirit, is brilliant:
“It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause. And , at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be wth those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
What a way to quieten critics and forgive failures.
Brendan Kennelly quoted ‘The dawning of the day‘:
“One morning early I walked forth
By the margin of Lough Leane
The sunshine dressed the trees in green
And summer bloomed again
I left the town and wandered on
Through fields all green and gay
And whom should I meet but a colleen sweet
At the dawning of the day.
No cap or cloak this maiden wore
Her neck and feet were bare
Down to the grass in ringlets fell
Her glossy golden hair
A milking pail was in her hand
She was lovely, young and gay
She wore the palm from Venus bright
By the dawning of the day.
On a mossy bank I sat me down
With the maiden by my side
With gentle words I courted her
And asked her to be my bride
She said, “Young man don’t bring me blame”
And swiftly turned away
And the morning light was shining bright
At the dawning of the day. ”
Yet the one thing that Charlie surely brought with him in his wake was “blame”. I find it had to understand why Kennelly chose those words…
Kennelly spoke at the Requiem Mass, and said:
“Charlie loved poetry. And I used to meet him now and again in different places to talk about it and to say a poem for him. And sometimes he’d recite a poem too. He once recited a poem in Latin to me and it floored me altogether. And if he like the poem that I said to him he always said, ‘Ah, you boy ya’, and I waited for the commendation.
” (Haughey) often quoted Kavanagh’s exhortation to youthful poets to ‘try to be more human’, and that was basically his message to me and I think to all of us…
” he liked Raifteiri, the blind poet from Mayo. Every spring, Raifteiri would travel through Mayo, searching for a place where he felt young. There’s always that place in people. I think for Charlie it was Inishvickillane and Dingle and he just loved the place.
“he was a so a strong believer in encouragement and determination. If you ever said a negative thing to him, he’d clatter you, with his tongue that is. Because he was a real Dubliner. He was pure. He was witty, he was quick. He was positive. He was determined and he wanted you to be determined.”
Kennelly recited Yeats’s “Politics“:
“‘In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms.’ -Thomas Mann
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms. ”
Was Haughey the “travelled man”, “a politician that has both read and thought”? Or was he a young man who held “that girl” in his arms?
Kennelly also quoted “Raglan Road” by Patrick Kavanagh:
“On Raglan Road on an autumn day I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I passed along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.
On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion’s pledge,
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay -
Oh I loved too much and by such by such is happiness thrown away.
I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that’s known
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone
And word and tint without stint for I gave her poems to say.
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May
On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow
That I had loved not as I should a creature made of clay -
When the angel woos the clay he’d lose his wings at the dawn of day.”
Another image of a woman-loving man…
Kennelly read “Dublin made me” by Donagh McDonagh:
“DUBLIN made me and no little town
With the country closing in on its streets
The cattle walking proudly on its pavements
The jobbers, the gombeenmen and the cheats
Devouring the fair-day between them
A public-house to half a hundred men
And the teacher, the solicitor and the bank-clerk
In the hotel bar drinking for ten.
Dublin made me, not the secret poteen still
The raw and hungry hills of the West
The lean road flung over profitless bog
Where only a snipe could nest
Where the sea takes its tithe of every boat.
Bawneen and currach have no allegiance of mine,
Nor the cute self-deceiving talkers of the South
Who look to the East for a sign.
The soft and dreary midlands with their tame canals
Wallow between sea and sea, remote from adventure
And Northward a far and fortified province
Crouches under the lash of arid censure.
I disclaim all fertile meadows, all tilled land
The evil that grows from it and the good,
But the Dublin of old statutes, this arrogant city
Stirs proudly and secretly in my blood.”
The politician Haughey would never have quoted that poem as he courted round the country.
Finally, Brendan Kennelly came to his own poem “Begin“:
“Begin again to the summoning birds
to the sight of light at the window,
begin to the roar of morning traffic
all along Pembroke Road.
Every beginning is a promise
born in light and dying in dark
determination and exaltation of springtime
flowering the way to work.
Begin to the pageant of queuing girls
the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal
bridges linking the past and future
old friends passing through with us still.
Begin to the loneliness that cannot end
since it perhaps is what makes us begin,
begin to wonder at unknown faces
at crying birds in the sudden rain
at branches stark in the willing sunlight
at seagulls foraging for bread
at couples sharing a sunny secret
alone together while making good.
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.”
A beautiful poem that I admire, but can’t help noticing “the pageant of queuing girls”…
Kennelly concluded: “I’d love to dedicate it if I may to that great woman Maureen Haughey, and to all her family and to Father Eoghan for his lovely words this morning.”
I couldn’t help thinking that the poet had become a politician.
The difficult poem on the life of Charlie, the poem which rises above the given present, and takes its readers deeper, has not yet been written. No amount of quoting poems written for other purposes will do.
