A Retrospect

  Layers of perception: the Heaneys share a loughscape before returning to a familiar mountainside vantage-point. The mature stage they have reached in life is reflected in both pieces particularly the second.          I MP (220): Repeatedly in Seeing Things it is the unpredictability and change­-ability of water and sky which excite the poet and prompt new and unusual angles of vision. A watercolour in words of an Irish lough-scape dominated by liquidity. To all appearances (apparently) the land is afloat and the man-made gives way to the dominant element: Every road bridging or skirting water. Terra firma is water-locked if not waterlogged (islanded), each landmass a fortress with its own defences (field drains still as moats), guarded […]