A Poem for Christopher

Saint Christopher Carrying the Infant Christ, c.1615, Orazio Borgianni (1574 - 1616), Italian, Oil on canvas, National Gallery of Scotland. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/4689

In January 2024, I was sitting in my car in Cathedral Quarter, Belfast, and scribbled this poem down because it was in my head and was sure to disappear if I didn't take the time to write it. I was on my way to a Burns Night event at the Deer's Head, which was organised by Reclaim the Enlightenment. I made the daft decision to read the poem on stage two minutes after writing it. (Why???) I'd had a great response to my poems the year before at the same event, but this time I faltered a bit. I was probably just knackered after a few weeks of commuting to Bellaghy, but really the poem wasn't finished.

The backdrop is that I was working in Seamus Heaney HomePlace and had a chat with some teachers about the impact of 'Mid-Term Break.' We'd all read it in the 1990s when 'Death of a Naturalist' was on the GCSE curriculum. I studied the collection with Mrs Nelson at Larne Grammar School, and she must have done a good job, because I fell in love with Heaney's poetry and can still recite passages to this day.

The day before the Reclaim event, I had nipped out at lunch time to see Heaney's grave, and what happened on that short walk is recorded in the poem. I actually went to the wrong graveyard at first and saw the graves of Francis Hughes and Thomas McElwee.

​I went up to a man and said, 'Excuse me, can you tell me where Heaney's grave is.' He responded,  'Which Heaney is it you're leukin, dear?' and at this point I understood Bellaghy. 

I found my way to the grave, turned and something caught my eye.

Then, out of the blue, and 33 years after my GCSES, the woman who introduced me to Seamus Heaney (and Jane Austin) wrote to me on Facebook.

​My poem was now complete.

Here it is, my ode to Seamus Heaney, Larne Grammar School, Mrs Nelson, Christopher Heaney, Bellaghy, my son, Christopher Kelly – and, of course, 'Mid-Term Break.'

Christopher

Those Bellaghy days were all darkness and headlights
piercing my eyes, until pink skies fused
loughs by Toomebridge in Tilley lamp hues.
 
I clocked out one day, walked fast to a chapel
by the perilous bend, to a poet’s grave
cut in stone —  absorbent of light and tears.
 
Turning in circles to Scullions and scholars,
my eyes fell hard upon a boy’s name,
and I could hear Mrs Nelson, reading;
 
her voice, shaped like an A in red pen,
became O, like och, her dailygone eyes
turning candle-lit soft as snowdrops.
 
She could hardly say ‘a foot for every year.’
I was lost and sappled in some brother’s grief,
musing how foreign lands had once been so close
 
when half-way through the village clarity came,
like a K: travelling safely and expectant,
I had once worn the saint’s name in utero.