Seeing Things

  The title poem, a triptych, explores variations on the theme of ‘visibility’: a primary experience that taught of life’s impermanence; stone chiseled to produce liquid images; a telling face-to-face with a father, dead yet still alive. Annihilation, whereby ultimately everything is reduced to nothingness, lurks ineluctably in the background.          I A poem about ‘utterness’: the visibility of primary experience raised to high-definition status. Once upon a time the infant Heaney was treated to a Sunday morning outing en famille to Inishbofin island. The scene provided a feast for his young senses: glare (Sunlight), sight and smell (turf smoke), sound (seagulls), perspective (boatslip), an invasive odour (diesel). The individual youngsters present were handled carefully (One by one […]