Silence for Hassan at event to mark new work by Heaney

Poet Seamus Heaney and South African ambassador Ms Melanie Verwoerd joined university staff and students in a moment's silence for the murdered aid worker, Margaret Hassan, at NUI Galway yesterday. Lorna Siggins, Western Correspondent, reports.

The silence for Ms Hassan and her family was requested by Mr Seán Love, director of Amnesty International, at an event to mark publication of a poem and essay by Mr Heaney.

In NUI Galway's Aula Maxima, Mr Love said that today's human rights' framework faced its "greatest threat" since the second World War due to the efforts of terrorist organisations and governments acting under the guise of a "war on terror".

Entitled Anything Can Happen, Mr Heaney's latest work is a translation of an ode by Horace, written over 2,000 years ago, with an accompanying essay on the theme of 21st century conflict. It includes versions in 23 different languages, and all royalties go to Amnesty International.

A handbound version was presented to former South African president Mr Nelson Mandela in Galway last year, and yesterday a second copy, signed by Mr Mandela, was presented by Mr Heaney to NUI Galway's president, Dr Iognáid Ó Muircheartaigh, for display in the university library.

At the gathering, Mr Heaney said Horace's poem was about an "individual in shock" because his world had been shaken. It was very much the world we were "ushered into" when danger and destruction "burst into flames" at New York's World Trade Centre on September 11th, 2001, he noted. "It registers a moment when an individual no longer feels safe in the world, no longer trusts the sky above his head or the earth beneath his feet. Anything, he suddenly realises, can happen. . .

"Horace ... has a vision of the world as a place where naked, cruel power is tirelessly and terribly in operation, where humanity itself is red in tooth and claw."

The question for us, as for Horace, is how to cope in such circumstances, Mr Heaney said. "And the answer has to be, by making the humanist wager, by committing ourselves to the construction of a humane culture, by enshrining in our hearts and in our institutions a respect for spiritual values and human rights."

NUI Galway was a home for such work, given that the Irish Centre for Human Rights is based there, he said.