How often in a good story, especially a story we value, does our attention move from the main characters to the incidental ones? The supernumeraries, as they say in the theatre. We start wondering what those other people are doing, or thinking. Why are they there anyway? Are they just scene-fillers, nothing out of the ordinary?
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney has obviously asked this question, if we are to understand his new poem 'Miracle':
Not the one who takes up his bed and walksBut the ones who have known him all alongAnd carry him in —Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplockedIn their backs, the stretcher handlesSlippery with sweat. And no let-upUntil he's strapped on tight, made tiltableAnd raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing.Be mindful of them as they stand and waitFor the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool,Their slight lightheadedness and incredulityTo pass, those ones who had known him all along.
Heaney suffered a mild stroke in recent times and the poem speaks of the humbling awareness of how, when sick, vulnerable, helpless yourself, others step in to tend and care. As the poem also makes clear, care can be an incredibly efficient and physically challenging business for those involved. The helplessness of the one in need only increases his powers of observation of those doing the help.
The conventional homily on the miracle of the lame man rightly focuses on his faith and hope. But Heaney, I think with a certain sense of humour about the whole affair, draws attention not just to the faith and hope of the man's friends, but also their charity. It is they who will go to any trouble to help their mate in his hour of need. The poet even takes on the tone of the preacher, asking us to 'Be mindful of them' — and it has to be said, we have probably never been particularly mindful of them before. He deliberately repeats Milton's phrase, 'They also serve who only stand and wait.'
This poem is followed in his latest collection by the title poem, 'Human Chain'. Same verse form, same observation of physical labour, same sense of communal involvement dedicated to a single, satisfactory objective.
Seeing the bags of meal passed hand to handIn close-up by the aid workers, and soldiersFiring over the mob, I was braced againWith a grip on two sack corners,Two packed wads of grain I'd worked