22/06/2026
✨ Poetry Corner ✨
To mark our upcoming event on a fellow Nobel laureate and Seamus Heaney’s friend, Czesław Miłosz, we’re sharing a poem Heaney dedicated to Miłosz following his passing in 2004.
🌎 Though they came from different parts of the world, what both poets shared were their experiences of political upheaval in their homelands and formative encounters with religion in their childhoods. The poem’s title, therefore, works on several levels: it echoes Miłosz’s poem ‘The World’, which greatly inspired Heaney; honours their shared gift for finding the extraordinary within the ordinary; and serves as a final farewell to Miłosz, now in another realm.
➡️ If you’d like to learn more about the man Heaney called his “hero” and “the giant at my shoulder,” visit: https://www.nli.ie/exhibitions-events/giant-my-shoulder-seamus-heaney-czeslaw-milosz or keep an eye on our socials!
📷 Image Description: Text of the poem on a grey background. The text reads as follows:
Out of This World
in memory of Czeslaw Milosz
1. ‘Like everybody else…’
‘Like everybody else, I bowed my head
during the consecration of the bread and wine,
lifted my eyes to the raised host and raised chalice,
believed (whatever it means) that a change occurred.
I went to the altar rails and received the mystery
on my tongue, returned to my place, shut my eyes fast,
made
an act of thanksgiving, opened my eyes and felt
time starting up again.
There was never a scene
when I had it out with myself or with another.
The loss occurred offstage. And yet I cannot
disavow words like "thanksgiving" or "host"
or even "communion bread." They have an undying
tremor and draw, like well water far down.’
