A Kite For Michael And ChristopherSeamus Heaney[Sita , Ellis, Rachel, and Emma]

A kite for Michael and ChristopherAll through that Sunday afternoonA kite flew above Sunday,a tightened drumhead, an armful of blow chaff.

I’d seen it grey and slippy in the making,I’d tapped it when it dried out white and stiff,I’d tied the bows of the newspaperalong its six-foot tail.

But now it was far up like a small black larkand now it dragged as if the bellied stringwere a wet rope hauled uponto life a shoal.

My friend says that the human soulis about the weight of a snipeyet the soul at anchor there,the string that sags and ascends,weigh like a furrow assumed into the heavens.

Before the kite plunges down into the woodand this line goes uselesstake in your two hands, boys, and feelthe strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.You were born fit for it.Stand here in front of meand take the strain.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xrucpc_seamus-heaney-a-kite-for-michael-and-christopher_creationHe describes the kite in detail, and how they go out on a Sunday

afternoon and fly it. Then in stanza four the poem unfurls into a big bag, the kind that carries all sorts of meaning. The kite becomes a metaphor of the soul. The soul tries to ascend, but is held onto by the person on the other end of the string. Heaney describes this in a variety of ways: flying the kite is ploughing a field, it's like trying to pull up an anchor that is caught in a shoal. The feeling is laborious: keeping the soul up in the air, while not letting it fly completely away, is intense work.

In the last stanza Heaney, having apparently got the kite into the air, hands the line to his two boys. Presumably when the kite plunges into the wood, then life will be over. In the meantime, hanging onto it, living life with your soul in the air, is one's life work. Perhaps it is the soul's grief: the soul wants to fly higher and higher into the sky, but can only go so far because it is attached to a mortal. Or perhaps it is through grief that comes from living, that one begins to feel the presence of the soul. Probably there's something of both meanings in it. The lesson that Heaney passes onto his children is: Don't be afraid of grief. Grief will come, but in the end its presence means you are alive. It means that as a human you strive to reach into the heavens. And you are strong enough to take the pain,

with the beauty. Indeed, grief is almost a beautiful thing in the poem: "strumming, rooted, long-tailed." It is like the music of a harp, like a firmly rooted tree, like a long-tailed kite flying in the wind. And we can "take the strain:" by holding on to the soul, accepting the grief, we can live fully