Squarings xlii
Heaney offers his reader a clue as to how to ‘enter’ the 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); Heaney blends events, emotions and thoughts that have graced his existential presence: Ulster landscapes and dialect; traditional turf cutting; Ulster mind-sets; old Ireland overtaken by modernism; environmental concerns. This poem highlights the ghosts of Irish stock in an image of rare beauty. The lyrical scenes (Heather and kesh and turf stacks reappear) of Heaney’s Ulster spring still to his mind Summer by summer still, sight and sound alike (grasshoppers and all). […]