Seamus
The beginning of sophomore year, I moved with six of my friends into a pair of adjoining suites on the top floor of F-entry in Adams House. We immediately threw a party. I’m sure Yule Caise, a senior (and accomplished filmmaker) who lived alone and shared a fire door with us was none too pleased with his new neighbors.
The main entry for the dorm was off Bow Street. Between going to classes, my shifts as a security guard, meals, etc., I was in and out of that thing a hundred times a day. Every so often, I passed an older man with a thick head of silver hair. I figured he was a professor or visiting scholar.
One night, coming through the door, we bumped into each other. Hard. He was completely at fault. He was listening to a Walkman and lost in the music. He apologized and asked my name. From his accent, I could tell he was Irish. From his speech, I could tell he was hammered.
“Dónal Logue.”
“Dónal? Are you Irish?”
I explained my parents were from Kerry and we’d come to the States when I was a baby.
“There's a beautiful Gaelic song, Dónal og. Listen to this,” he said. He handed me his headphones and I immediately recognized the band.
“The Chieftains.”
“Jesus, they’re great aren't they?”
After that, I’d see him in the dining hall and we’d have lunch. We became friends. His name was Seamus and he was a visiting professor in literature. One day, my roommate, Clay Tarver, said, “Dude, do you realize who you’re having lunch with?”
“Yeah. Seamus.”
“Seamus Heaney. Do you know he’s regarded as the greatest living poet in the world? He’s going to be a Nobel Prize winner someday.”
I didn’t. To me, he was just Seamus. We talked about whatever came to mind — music, trivial matters, the news. He was interested in the story of my parents, a couple from Kerry who’d moved to Africa to work the missions and ended up on the Mexican border. He was kind, he was unaffected. While as Irish as Irish could be, Seamus never once gave off the vibe you sometimes get as an Irish-American that you are being judged; that you somehow want something from a true Irishman from Ireland, an affirmation that you, too, are Irish. It’s something I’d seen a lot of Irish-Americans crave, a game I recognized early on was futile. I get the tension on both sides. It goes to the heart of identity, earned or unearned, real or romantic.
I was a border rat from the desert. Seamus didn’t care. In fact, he was fascinated by Mexico. He asked me stories about the border over pints (and we shared a fair few of those).
One day, I went to the poetry room in Lamont Library, grabbed some of his books, and settled in. I was blown away.
When I got back to my room, the phone rang. It was Seamus. I didn’t want to tell him I’d just spent hours reading his words. In an odd way, I think Seamus liked the fact that I was largely unfamiliar with his work. So many people in Cambridge would pull him aside to share some favorite stanza of his with him, and while he was always polite, I’m sure it was a pain in his ass.
Seamus said he was being honored by some such and such and the Boston Globe and Boston Herald were going to cover the event being held the following day in the Adams House courtyard. He asked if I would be his guest.
“Of course. What time?”
“Ah, come at five.”
After hanging up, I announced to my roommates the world-renowned poet, Seamus Heaney, had invited me as his “personal” guest to a fête in his honor. I got a round of high fives. I was high. Like a kid before prom, I agonized over what to wear. I wanted it to be appropriately formal and “literary.” I chose a herringbone sports coat, a turtleneck, some black pants and wing-tip shoes.
The next day, five couldn’t come fast enough. I showed up ten minutes early and the quad was strangely empty. At about ten past, Seamus shuffled in and said hello. A few minutes later, a van pulled into the gates.
“There it is.”
Seamus spoke to the driver and returned. He told me that there were chairs and folding tables in the Adams House basement, said liquor and refreshments were in the van, showed me where to set up the tables, where to set up a bar, and thanked me.
In my mind, I’d imagined I was going to be seated at some fancy table with him and other Illuminati. Now, I realized, I was there to do the grunt work.
I set up the tables, unfolded a few dozen chairs, set up a bar, got buckets of ice from the dining hall and played waiter/bartender for the next three hours.
A lectern was set up and esteemed types waxed on about Seamus and his accomplishments while I refreshed their drinks. The crowd was the most hilariously snobby assembly of Cambridge-types one could possibly imagine. After reading Seamus's poem, "Digging," an academic dove into a weird, self-aggrandizing disquisition about the tactile nature of potato skin. I had no clue what the f*&k he was talking about. I'm sure Seamus didn't either. "Digging" made me think of cutting turf with my Uncle Johnny and my cousins back in Sneem. It reminded me of my cousin James O'Shea digging a ditch in Killorglin. James was a machine with a shovel. There's something about shoveling that is deeply fused in the guanine-cytosine content in the DNA of the Irish. The crowd chortled at obscure literary references and howled at the mildest of poetic funnies. It was so smug — so not Seamus.
At the end of the event, I started breaking down the tables and chairs and Seamus came up and patted me on the back. “Good lad, Dónal. Thanks for the help.” He wandered back unsteadily towards C-entry.
When I got back to my room, my roommates wanted to know how it went. I told them.
Clay laughed. “What a burn! Ha- personal guest! Hahahaha- He wanted you to be a caterer. For free!”
I had to laugh at myself.
Later that year, Seamus was commissioned to write a special poem for Harvard’s 350th Anniversary. It began, “John Harvard strode the Yard, the books stood open and the gates unbarred.”
Clay said, “Knowing him, they probably paid him a butt load of money, he kept going out, drinking, deadline hanging over his head, and whipped up whatever BS he could fifteen minutes before it was due.”
I laughed. He may have been right.
Shortly thereafter, Seamus won the Nobel Prize for literature. Years later I read something he wrote about his time at Harvard being uncomfortable because of the academic rockstar spotlight shone on him. It wasn't his scene. It was an honor to be the young kid Seamus asked to set up tables and chairs, to carry the buckets and haul off the trash. By doing so, he kept me on his side of the fence. When I remember him, I always picture him smiling, laughing, dancing with a Sony Walkman, most likely to some beautiful Irish song.
RIP Seamus
Sorry a little behind on my reading. Great story. He seems like he was a pretty neat person.