Lightenings viii
Heaney offered his reader a clue as to how to ‘enter’ the Squarings poems: You could think of every poem in ‘Squarings’ as the peg at the end of a tent-rope reaching up into the airy structure, but still with purchase on something earthier and more obscure (DOD 320); Early Christian and Celtic legend was prone to present mysterious, miraculous illusions to create a sense of awe in humble minds. Heaney’s version of the legend of Clonmacnoise (The annals say) unfolds in a space between the earth-bound world of a 6th century chapel and an airy, transcendent reality above; the staging provides a kind of ‘skylight’ through which a person may pass from one to the other. The monks, […]