The Given Note’s mournful spirit would certainly have been in the air when the poem was read at Heaney’s funeral.

I was simply tongue-tied by all that my daughter’s reporting was bearing witness to.

I have not yet made it to James Joyce’s grave.

“I became Seamus eile — Irish for ‘the other Seamus.’ A nice qualifier. Otherhood via brotherhood.”

There’s a scene in Brian Friel’s iconic play Translations (1980) that seems to me to speak to our current moment.