The Song of the Bullets

Heaney’s Song of the Bullets predicts dark times around the corner for Northern Ireland. Heaney’s title suggests a musical setting. In fact sound accompaniment will be provided not by musicians but by agents of death personified to utter their own message of predominance and power. On the face of it a long-time rural observer of events as they develop around him watches from his personal space (yard). The situation appears reassuringly stable – the distant firmament is unchanged (usual stars) whilst closer to the Earth the comforting presences of the solar system (still and seemly planets) shed their light, albeit frail (lantern-bright), above familiar ground at dusk (our darkened hill). Suddenly his radar is disrupted: an abnormal signal (star that […]