Poetry and pain at Dublin funeral of Seamus Heaney
DUBLIN (AP) — With poetry and pain, Ireland is mourning the loss of its Nobel laureate poet, Seamus Heaney.
His funeral Monday in Dublin is being attended by many of Ireland's elite. Among those packing the pews of the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart are Irish government leaders, poets and novelists, Bono and The Edge from rock band U2, and former Lebanese hostage Brian Keenan.
Ireland's foremost uilleann piper, Liam O'Flynn, played a wailing lament before family members and friends offered a string of readings from the Bible and their own often-lyrical remembrances of the country's most celebrated writer of the late 20th century.
Heaney won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995. He died Friday in a Dublin hospital at the age of 74.
