After his poetry collection Wintering Out was published in 1972, a comment from Seamus Heaney on that violent and turbulent year was reported in the Cork Examiner, “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere.”

Some forty-eight years later, as Covid-19 closed down society, Heaney’s words became the most popular meme in Ireland.

The words have expressed the mood of the present times. The first stanza of Heaney’s poem Servant Boy tells of a man who has spent his years working wherever he may earn a wage:…