Kilkenny again validate timeworn ‘work and talent’ theory

Perhaps as the two of them relaxed some evening in Cambridge, Seamus Heaney enlightened Derek Walcott about hurling and Croke Park and what happens when the known universe narrows into a man standing over a sideline cut with time running out on another season.

How else to explain Walcott’s lines about so many taking thunder for granted, asking “how common is the lightning”? Is there another context that suits?