Glanmore Revisited 5. Lustral Sonnet

                               The poet explains his absence from Glanmore as a classical Roman ‘lustrum’ ritual of spiritual cleansing …  Heaney reflects on his return to the cottage. His desire to be a poet turned him into a ‘word-burglar’, an accumulator of intellectual possessions from early on. He experienced the same intruder mentality (breaking and entering) on taking up the ownership of Glanmore. The excitement of pilfering the word-hoard for poetic use  (thrilled me) was stronger than any fear it generated (scared me­). The same mix of feelings (still did) accompanied his upward-mobility (came into my own) and his slightly uncharactreristic acquisition of bricks and mortar (my own masquerade […]