Seamus Heaney wrote this for David Hammond, his singer/guitarist friend, after a night spent with friends happily singing and talking -
The Singer's House
People here used to believe
that drowned souls lived in seals.
At spring tides they might change shape.
They loved music and swam in for a singer
who might stand at the end of summer
in the mouth of a whitewashed turf-shed,
his shoulder to the jamb, his song
a row-boat far out in evening.
When I came here first you were always singing,
a hint of the clip of the pick
in your winnowing climb and attack.
Raise it again, man. We still believe what we hear.
(- Do you have to take everything so seriously? - Well, yes.)