Seamus Heaney at the Paris Review:
Dear Tom,
It’s not that I have not been thinking about you. I have, quite a bit. And the thoughts have as ever been tinged with second thoughts: for example, I was sorry after you rang that time in the summer that I had not urged you to come over. The usual hunched, wild-eyed panic about how I could do this and that and still have time for the spacious pleasures of sleigh rides in Wicklow intervened too automatically. Somehow, the chance had come and gone in a moment. And then too I’ve been bugged by the idea that I saw a letter from you in a big mail- pile—perhaps when I came back from Australia or Poland last autumn—and that I put it aside to read properly, after the rush-through for crisis-stuff, and then never found it. At any rate, I am haunted by this notion and only hope I am mistaken.
It’s my birthday and it is a day of utterly vernal Easter. Holy Thursday indeed. Fifty-sixth birthday. The fact that I’m actually sitting out in the open air (cf. Mark Twain on the English countryside) will give you some idea of the extraordinary pause and poise of the weather. Loveliest-of-trees time.
more here.
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