Geordie Grieg: One last larky text then Famous Seamus Heaney was gone By Geordie Greig His last words were as brief and poignant as anything Seamus Heaney ever wrote. The greatest poet to come out of Ireland since WB Yeats had an unexpected fall last week and needed an operation. On Friday, he was texted in hospital by his friend Matthew Evans, the former chairman of his publishers Faber & Faber. At 6.49am Heaney replied on his way to the operating theatre: "Stripped for action, much love Seamus." It was simply observed, self-deprecating, unsentimental and positive. He was ever thus with his words and his life. Three hours later, aged 74, he was dead, unexpectedly making news headlines from St Lucia to London. Heaney was the last literary titan of the post-war years. Touched by genius: Poet Seamus Heaney in 1970 He never used words that were impotent, needless, mere padding. Every syllable and rhythm counted, quietly, modestly. The death of Heaney deprives us of the greatest living poet, studied by most schoolchildren in Britain. His 1966 book, Death Of A Naturalist, was published in more than 40 languages and sold millions of copies, a rare thing for a poet to find popularity and become a classic in his lifetime. He was a colossus who was known as "famous Seamus" by those who did not know him. He became famous not just because he was the most brilliant poet since TS Eliot and WH Auden. It was also because he was magic in person, charming the Queen or American presidents as much as his local taxi driver, intuitively generous, twinkly-eyed with a seer-like ability to observe and say simple, profound truths. Yet he was never touched or changed by fame. He always thought of others first. When the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, sought to meet him, Heaney went to a bookshop and bought his book of poems and made sure he had studied it and that Williams was made to feel that he was the man who mattered as a writer. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked, Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man. My grandfather cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner's bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Over his shoulder, going down and down For the good turf. Digging. The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I've no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it. From Heaney's breakthrough 1966 collection, Death Of A Naturalist, published by Faber & Faber. When Heaney won the Nobel Prize in 1995 he became a global star, yet he tried to avoid the limelight, which he saw as a false light, and not how life is or should be. His most famous poem, Digging, was about how he watched his father farm potatoes in rural Ulster, and that simple tilling of the soil was how he saw his life, digging out words with the nib of a pen. Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests, snug as a gun. He explained love, civil war, nature and friendship. He was a celebratory poet. He was able with a single sentence to make impact, make life seem purposeful. Always with modesty, never fanfare. When I visited him in Dublin, the manuscripts of many of his poems were stuffed in an old cabinet in the kitchen. As was his Nobel gold medal. He laughed at life, and made sense of it. The waiters in the restaurant where we had lunch felt the glow of his charm, as did everyone who met him. At his house, letters spilled out on the doormat from admirers all over the world. He never lost the plot when actors, university professors, politicians wanted a bit of him; he never altered. His wife Marie was his compass and the centre of everything, with their three children. He had a modesty and a genuine concern for the dignity of others that was never less than moving. When at a poetry reading in London, my daughter, aged 11, was introduced to him, he wanted to know what poet she liked to read. He wrote letters to friends that seemed spun from gold even when he was simply declining an invitation. He was touched by gentleness and genius. He changed millions of people's views with his ability to take words to deal with profound truths, and find a meaning in love, friendship and everyday living. It was all about finely observed detail, but the Nobel committee noted the "ethical depth" of his works which "exalt everyday miracles and the living past." It might be the cast-iron stove-lid or the shadow of a leaf. He saw and he shared, a very great and good man, celebrating and making us value life.