To Walk with Saints and Scholars

March 19, 2026

Photo by Elle Leontiev on Unsplash

Hard to believe that the world shut down six years ago today. How soon we forget, and how much we have changed…

---

When All the Others Were Away at Mass by Seamus Heaney

When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some were crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives

Never closer the whole rest of our lives.