Lord Mayor,

Lord Lieutenant,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The poet Michael Longley is, by any standards, a remarkable man. I need not, in this place and on this occasion, begin to list his many accomplishments in poetry, the garlands and laurels he has rightly gathered for his work over a long, productive and luminous life. The poems speak for themselves — eloquent, precise and passionate, large-hearted, intelligent and above all humane.

It is that humane quality in the life and in the…