Poets ponder the meaning of ‘mind the gap

It’s a small world, Dublin – and you never know who you might meet on the Dart.

Still, this small girl doesn’t look overly impressed when the carriage doors open at Dún Laoghaire station to reveal, not a beach and buckets and spades and ice creams, but a couple of giants from the world of international poetry.

Our photo recalls the occasion, in the summer of 1989, when a new series of poetry cards was launched on the commuter trains. “Poems by Sean O’Riordan, Francis Ledwidge, Seamus Deane, Richard Murphy and Anthony Cronin are included in the series,” the caption explains.

What it doesn’t explain is why Saint Lucia-born Derek Walcott and our own Seamus Heaney are pacing the platform in what appears to be a slow-motion poets’ waltz.

Perhaps they’re measuring it out to see if it will accommodate a nice bit of iambic pentameter? Or maybe one is reciting, the other listening as they execute their stately Dart-y dance.

Either way, the expression on young Rebecca O’Neill-Doran’s face suggests that she wishes they’d stop faffing about and get on the train.

While he was in Dublin on this visit, Derek Walcott was given an honorary degree by Trinity College, Dublin. But nobody could have known in 1989 that within six years both poets would be Nobel prizewinners: Walcott in 1992, and Heaney in 1995. Since then we have, sadly, lost Seamus Heaney – but Derek Walcott, now Sir Derek, is still going strong.

And the Dart’s love affair with poetry continues. Last year we had Yeats; this year it was Chinese poems. Long may it last, for the long-suffering commuters of this world need a few well-chosen words of encouragement and inspiration as oft as we can get it.

Published: July 7th, 1989

Photograph by Matt Kavanagh

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