Squarings xliii

  In conversation with DOD (p.325) Heaney revealed the period of intense creative activity that accompanied the genesis of Seeing Things:  I was pouncing on twelve liners on all kinds of occasions … chance sentences from my reading. They just turned up and he went with it. This poem pits the skills of the experienced tracker against a creature’s survival instinct; its ability to disappear was not unlike what became of an erstwhile drinking buddy. As a result of his reading, perhaps, Heaney offers a lesson to an imagined beginner in tracking hare via  prints in the snow. Initial progress is easy enough until a problem arises: the prints stop without warning (just like that). So, literally and metaphorically this is the end […]