The Story Archive

Human Chain

Seamus Heaney · 2010 CE · Poem · English · Contemporary

Poems written after the poet's stroke in 2006 draw on his father, the chain of hands passing sacks of grain, and a version of a passage from the sixth book of the Aeneid. The loss of the dead and the frailty of the body are held in small, exact scenes. The poet's last collection before his death in 2013, winner of the Forward Prize.

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