poems by seamus heaney by Seamus Heaney

Shelf Life

Memories are awakened by items that sit on ‘surfaces’ within Heaney’s private space; contrary tothe modern term ‘shelf-life’ that sets out the time it takes for perishables to become unfit for consumption, Heaney’s items remain timeless, have no ‘sell-by-date’. Heaney maps out his private space (in) six terse lyrics (MP p187); 1. Granite Chip The speaker once hammered a piece of Houndstooth stone ( ) off Joyce’s Martello/ Tower (near Dublin) recalling hard, Scottish granite associations (Aberdeen of my mind). He injured himself in the process: his human tissue was more vulnerable than the stone he gripped. Attractive though the surface and colourings of the granite chip were (this flecked insoluble brilliant) the stone has little in common with the […]

A Migration

The title introduces an all-female family group that has moved communities for reasons of necessity. Their new accommodation, close to where the speaker lives, is down-at-heel: leaking roof ../ cracked dormer windows. The identities of those involved are clarified. Standing out in his memory is the adolescent Brigid and the life-style imposed upon her: the sharing of a crowded bed; the scary sounds from outside: branch-whipped slates; the onset of puberty, her starts of womanhood. The move has left traumatic marks: a dream troubled her head. Memories of a sea-crossing are both visual (a lounge/where empty bottles rolled/ at every slow plunge and lift) and emotional: from persistently weeping child to strange/ flowing black taxi and, as if from a […]

Last Look

The poet recounts the speaker’s last sighting of an old man taking his last look at the environment in which he has spent his life. Heaney’s in memoriam is addressed to the memory E.G. and though we later learn the man’s family name, only his initials prevail. A couple out for a spin above the sea-shore come across an old man stilled and oblivious, standing in limbo, mentally distant from the world around him;his gaze is focussed on the blossoming potatoes. This man-of-the-land has been walking the fields as evidenced by his trouser bottoms wet/ and flecked with grass seed. Roadside sounds that might have awakened him from his reverie (Crowned blunt-headed weeds…/ flailed against our car)spark no reaction in […]

Remembering Malibu

Dedicated to Brian Moore, Belfast novelist and friend, remembered by Heaney for his ‘kindness’ and his invitation to the Heaney family to visit him and his wife at their home in Malibu around 1970. New experiences challenge old attachments, transition is in the making. The first of two ‘American’ poems and first of a series of poems of transit and transitions (MP). A tale of two oceans and two cultures. The speaker recalls his introduction to the Pacific ocean at Brian Moore’s door. It was wilder and colder than he had led himself to believe. Surprised, perhaps, but above all relieved I would have rotted/ beside the luke-warm ocean I imagined. A cold ocean perhaps but less harsh than the […]

Making Strange

A further symptom of the poet in transition: when the New world meets the Old things collide. When professional development brings change the voice of poetry must move on. The speaker is at the interface of old and new as if separating irreconcilables: I stood between them. The living symbol of Heaney’s new world possesses a sophisticated travelled intelligence, combining tawny leather-accessorised prosperity and self-assured containment. He is articulate and precise: his speech like the twang of a bowstring. The emblem of the old Irish world is not ‘the’ other, but another, one of many, perhaps, self-neglecting and a touch backward: unshorn and bewildered. This one stands in rubber boots that sag with age: the tubs of his wellingtons. The […]

The Birthplace

Heaney and his wife are at Upper Bockhampton near Dorchester paying their respect to the spirit of English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). The 3-poem sequence explores associations with the poet and his birthplace. Heaney recalled the experienceslipping in en passant a reference to the significance of ‘station’ in a collection that includes the word in its title:The trees around the place, the thatched roof, the small rooms, all reminded me of Mossbawn. But that wasn’t the only reason I wrote it; there was also the fact that Hardy’s novels and poems were so much part of me by the time I got there. In fact, the grave in Stinsford churchyard and the house in Upper Bockharnpton are literary […]

Changes

A further example of poet in transition: a father and his child witness a special natural phenomenon; the experience provides him with an example of ‘change’ and with it a snippet of wisdom to be stored for the future. As they approach an emblematic Irish pump, long since replaced by mains water (in the long grass); the child knows not to speak (in silence). The father belongs to the generation that installed the pump; he can still ‘hear’ the shaft being constructed (bite of the spade that sank it), recall the mood of the stonemason as he embedded the pump (the slithering and grumble as the mason mixed his mortar). He pictures the aftermath of readily available drinking water (women […]

An Ulster Twilight

A poet in his mid-forties revisits the lost domain of childhood at a festive time of year and confirms that the mystery of Christmas supersedes political boundaries. The speaker pictures the disorderly workshop of a local carpenter and its disparate contents: spare bulb … scatter of nails; wood sorted into lengths and sizes (shelved timber); light reflected on tools (glinting chisels); the accommodation is modestly built of corrugated iron. The carpenter concentrates on the task of smoothing the timber: Eric Dawson stoops to his plane. Time to complete his job is pressing: five o’clock on a Christmas Eve. The process is re-played before the watcher’s eyes: Carpenter’s pencil next followed by a series of tools and a final finishing touch: […]

A Bat on the Road

The epigraph is borrowed from James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: A batlike soul waking to consciousness of itself in darkness and secrecy and loneliness. The final nouns defining the main ingredients of bat-like existence (shortage of light/ enlightenment; drawing back from human contact; isolation even outsider status) are equally the metaphorical embodiment of the creative spirit, be it a Joyce or a Heaney; these factors count amongst the issues hampering Heaney at this stage in his poetical development. Placed here within a series of poems of transition the bat is a ‘soul-mate’, a liberating spirit. You would (the repeated action perhaps of an anonymous companion on the rural walks of Heaney’s younger days) dislodge bats […]

A Hazel Stick for Catherine Ann

The father recalls a stick he fashioned for his young daughter. Elements that were fleeting (gone), enduring (kept), animate (salmon) and inanimate (hazel twig) turned an everyday event into something remarkable. Compared to ephemeral natural examples (the living mother-of-pearl of a salmon/ just out of the water) the emblematic stick’s colourings were more enduring; it kept salmon-silver as it matured (seasoned)Ownership of the bendy, reassuring stick gave a status not easily surrendered: what you have you hold (literally and metaphorically ‘something to hang onto’ ). Its uses might be peaceful (to play with or pose with)or aggressive: lay about with. The stick reminds the speaker of a previous generation (points back to cattle), to an earlier father-farmer version, to the spatter and/ […]

A Kite for Michael and Christopher

A second poem about family lines: initially a father with his own father then this same father with his sons. The poem contains various themes: parenthood, the human condition, belief and doubt, the tethered spirit, the fate of being Irish. It is about ‘sticking together’. A generation ago All through that Sunday afternoon the kite flew,literally high in the sky, metaphorically unaffected by the restrictions traditionally imposed by the Catholic Sabbath: … above Sunday The plaything possessed a tightened drumhead body and wind-buffeted tail, likened to an armful of blown chaff, the latter offering it stability and proper flight; without it the kite would plummet to the ground. Heaney had observed its papier mâché construction and tested its properties: at first […]

The Railway Children

This touching poem portrays a world reduced to the dimensions of a child’s imagination. The speaker is one of a group of youngsters, brothers and sisters perhaps, exploring their neighbourhood. Their play brings them to the railway line. Mounting the slopes of the cutting brings them to the same height as the overhead cables (eye-level with the white cups/ Of the telegraph poles)and within hearing-range of the sizzling wires. The child is mesmerised by the cables: their written-script-like curvature Like lovely freehand; their extent as they stretch out miles/ east and miles west beyond us; the tests to which Nature subjects them: sagging/ Under the burden of swallows. The children’s understanding of telecommunications provides an attractive alternative to the truth: […]

Sweetpea

Beauty is fragile but it has a way of surviving the imaginative strategies of an inexperienced young gardener. The piece’s launch mimics the colloquial question asked half a century ago of people whose approach to a task turned out to be short-sighted:’ What did Thought do?(A typical response might have been ‘he followed a muck-cart and thought it was a wedding’ or even ‘he stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni’.) Heaney offers his variation: ‘Stuck/ a feather in the ground and thought/ it would grow a hen.’ Preparation of the sweet-pea patch is sound enough: its regular spacing, rod by rod we pegged the drill; its plant supports: light brittle sticks, twiggy and unlikely; its well […]

An Aisling in the Burren

The direction in which life takes people distances them from places to which they are emotionally attached. The allure of the Burren has never faded: A time was to come when we yearned… They are back. Poetic focus settles warmly on the animal, vegetable and mineral riches of its northern shore (overlooking the Bay of Galway), its considerable provision of small sea-fish along eel-drugged flats, its sea-weed and bird life. Nature’s species have evolved: vexed by sea-water brine-maddened grass ensures earthly riches of biblical proportions: the aftermath of the reign of the meek. Other developments (political, social, or environmental) are not nearly so rosy: what the speaker can see is as much of hope that the purest/ and saddest were […]

Widgeon

A short piece dedicated to fellow Irishman Paul Muldoon (b.1951); eminent Irish poet; Pulitzer Prizefor Poetry; T.S. Eliot Prize winner;Oxford Professor of Poetry (1999 – 2004). The bird is an innocent victim of Man’s hunting instincts. Correspondences with the victims of contemporary sectarian violence emerge strongly and the poet raises a critical finger against injustice, his compassion evident in both the literal and allegorical contexts. Heaney’s speaker is removing the feathers from the duck in preparation for the cooking-pot. Its death by shooting caused suffering: It had been badly shot. The plucker has discovered the duck’s voice-box / … in the broken windpipe; its vocal function is likened to a flute stop. The man’s response is both unexpected and moving: […]

Sheelagh na Gig

A three-poem sequence that celebrates a stone block Sheelagh na Gig, one of many, projecting from beneath the eaves of 12th century Norman/ Romanesque church at Kilpeck near the city of Hereford in England. I The positioning of the block is pinpointed. The figure crouches hunkering, high on the church-wall: We look up at her…/ under the eaves. The block has a structural rôle as if she bears the whole stone burden (that of the church roof) on the small of her back and shoulders; her elbows are locked in position: pinioned. She has an astute mouth (face or vulva is not made clear) and the gripping fingers that hold her lower body openinvite copulation: push, push hard/ push harder. […]

The Loaning

This sequence of three poems is inspired by an Ulster lane in a landscape very familiar to the poet. The poems share the sounds of nature or reflect the demeanour of rural folk in one form or another. The focus of the sequence shifts between fiction and reality: an initial surreal animation, then a scene of Ulstermen accustomed to each other’s company and finally a lament for things lost or threatening both to the ear and the soul. The Loaning’ does not contain such certainties as grace or transcendence, only shadows; MP perceives in the sequence a number of binary oppositions – human silence/ stasis mortality versus natural ‘speech/ motion/ mutability … the poet’s apprehension of contemporary brutality has stained […]

The Sandpit

Heaney’s title refers to the piles of sand in which youngsters were delighted to play. His four-poem sequence expands the idea to reveal the impact made on the impressionable young Heaney by the post WWII construction period. The speaker, now an adult, provides retrospective insights and judgements; the child he was is omnipresent. The poem offers a further dimension: both poet and bricklayer are constructing things that will survive them. 1. 1946 A 7 year old recalls the symbolic first spadeful of earth of post-war building development on rural farmland: The first hole neat as a trapdoor/ cut into grazing. Each hole is a double spade action (cut again)followed by the physical exertion of heft and lift. The metal blade […]

The King of the Ditchbacks

is dedicated to John Montague, man of Letters, born in New York (1929) and brought up in Ireland. Montague dedicated his poem ‘Hearth Song’ to Heaney and worked successfully with him in recording their work for Claddagh Records (1968). DOD (p495) In the final three poem sequence of Part 1 Heaney introduces the Sweeney of Sweeny Astray and Sweeney Redevivus (Part 3). He traces the early development of a remarkable relationship between a twentieth century living poet and a 7th century character from Irish literature who has loomed large in his poetic consciousness for more than a decade. I Contact is established with an ‘otherworldly’ presence that has invaded the poet’s space (As if a trespasser/ unbolted a forgotten gate)and […]

Part Two: Station Island – the Sequence

Part 2 traces a ‘pilgrim’s progress’; Heaney composes a sequence of 12 poems under a chosen topological heading. At least twenty five years separate his original experiences on Station Island and the moment at which he chooses the location to draw together the different strands. Much water has passed beneath Heaney’s emotional, ethical, aesthetic and spiritual bridges in the interim. The older poet and his younger self face a selection of ‘ghosts’ who express their opinions or respond to Heaney’s inner conflicts some of which have remained obstinately present despite the passage of time; the ghosts are friendly, sad, self-defining, exemplary, admonitory, rebuking (NC p115). the ghosts are predominantly shades the poet own dream-life who have actually existed in Ireland; […]

Station Island – the Sequence I

The first piece follows the aftermath of a young man’s decision to ‘go with the spiritual flow’ and undertake the pilgrimage. A dissenting voice pressures him in vain to abandon the pilgrimage and urges him to overcome the orthodoxy of his upbringing. The early-morning Sunday sounds that summon folk to worship are sudden and urgent: A hurry of bell notes, taking wing over morning hush. Landscape, climate and time of year are evident in the water-blistered cornfields. The fleeting sounds from the bell tower (an escaped ringing) hint at freedom but are quickly silenced. Nature is in a suspense of anticipation: silence breathed unsettled by the appearance of a countryman, pre-Christian in appearance , carrying a bow-saw, held/ stiffly up like […]

Station Island – the Sequence II

Heaney’s self-scrutiny is pursued in his encounter with the ghost of William Carleton (see below) on the road to Lough Derg. Carleton’s emphasis concerns politics and social turbulence. Pausing on the journey (parked on a high road)and savouring the sights and sounds of nature around him Heaney’s preoccupations are interrupted: something came to life in the driving mirror. The ghost visitor is quickly recognised: by the urgency of his gait; his rural garb (overcoat and boots), his physical characteristics (bareheaded, big), his purposefulness (determined) and his bustling confidence (sure haste along the crown of the road). The ‘man’ generates a knee-jerk response from the challenged poet: I was suddenly out of the car. He comes face-to-face with this aggravated figure […]

Station Island – the Sequence III

The pilgrim has gone to one of Station Island’s ‘beds’. His initial humble posture (I knelt)is followed by a pause: Hiatus.. This is not prayer but rather obedience of the protocols of the pilgrimage, a ‘pervasive element’ from Heaney’s Catholic upbringing. The mindset (Habit’s afterlife) has transported him back to bead clicks and the murmurs/ from inside confessionals. Textures and odours have invaded his sense-memory: the invasiveness of waning candles insinuating slight/ intimate smells of wax at body heat. Expectancy (an active wind-stilled hush) and a marine association (the sea-shell held to the ear in which the jugular hiss of blood-flow resembles that of the sea) seem to herald a magic happening: the ocean stopped … a tide rested and […]

Station Island – the Sequence IV

Heaney encounters the ghost of Terry Keenan whom he knew from childhood and who became a missionary father in the tropical rain forests. The certainty of Keenan’s religious convictions conflicts with Heaney’s lapsing/ lapsed status (the pilgrim stands with his backto the religious icons at the outset of the poem). The piece reflects upon religious certainty and the status of the priesthood in Irish society. The irony is that Keenan’s vocation led indirectly to his death. The pilgrim stands hesitantly in the centre one of Station Island’s penitential ‘beds’ my back to the stone pillar and the iron cross. He ispoised to go through the motions of penitential routine: ready to say the dream words (imagined rather than real)I renounce […]

Station Island – the Sequence V

The poet encounters three figures who have influenced his personal development. The first is with an old man finding forward momentum difficult: his hands, like soft paws rowing, who groped for and warded off the air ahead. He is identified first by name and then by schoolmaster status: Barney … Master. Murphy’s debilitated shuffle and weakened voice are shadows of his former self: bulling in sudden rage all over again. Respectfully Heaney fell in behind, knowing his place, a lesser mortal, like a man lifting swathes at a mower’s heels. Murphy’s sockless feet are reminiscent of Nature exhibits in the Primary classroom where he worked: the dried broad bean that split its stitches in the display jar. The pilgrim’s polite opening […]