The BBC has just announced that the Irish poet Seamus Heaney has passed away at the age 74. Besides winning 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature, I adored his translation of Beowulf (1998). Below is one of my favorite sonnets of his.

Clink a pint and Oíche Mhaith.

Requiem for the Croppies

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley…

No kitchens on the run, no striking camp…

We moved quick and sudden in our own country.

The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.

A people hardly marching… on the hike…

We found new tactics happening each day:

We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike

And stampede cattle into infantry,

Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.

Until… on Vinegar Hill… the final conclave.

Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

They buried us without shroud or coffin

And in August… the barley grew up out of our grave.