An Invocation

The poem was published in the London Review of Books on August 6 1992. In this three-poem elegiac sequence Heaney invokes hard-line Scottish communist poet Hugh MacDiarmid; he recognises a kindred empathist for causes (with the difference, perhaps that MacDiarmid reacted much more radically than Heaney in his own Scottish nationalist way against the perceived injustices of government from Whitehall).  The pieces are written in memoriam. Heaney seeks a gesture of recognition (Incline to me, MacDiarmid, out of Shetland) acknowledging that due regard might be hard come by from a Scot as uncompromising as the landscape around him (stone-eyed from stone-gazing), a boozer (sobered up), a man of natural  ill-temper (thrawn). Heaney is not seeking the acknowledgement of MacDiarmid the […]