Seamus Heaney quotes

All I know is a door into the dark.

The Forge - Starting point, unknown, struggle

Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring, the unpredictable fantail of sparks

The Forge - Sounds of hard work, spontaneous idea creation

The anvil must be somewhere in the centre, horned as a unicorn, at one end square, set there immovable:

The Forge - lasts forever -> admiration/envy

An altar where he expends himself in shape and music

The Forge - Balletic/graceful image

Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose, he leans out on the jamb,

The Forge - Ungraceful, ugly/frightening contrasting image

Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and flick to beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

The Forge - Refining the idea into blacksmith's masterpiece

There was a sunlit absence.

I. Sunlight - Opening line

Water honeyed // in the slung bucket and the sun stood like a griddle cooling against the wall of each long afternoon.

I. Sunlight - Setting, enjambment, idealised memory

The reddening stove sent its plaque of heat against where she stood in a floury apron by the window.

I. Sunlight - Halo effect -> angelic, implicit colour (white, yellow, beige)

Now she dusts the board with a goose's wing

I. Sunlight - Metaphor for dusting the board with flour, elevating everyday acts

Here is space again, the scone rising to the tick of two clocks.

I. Sunlight - reference to the process of writing poetry/giving life to creation, reference to the first line

The 'spud' of the dynamo gleaming and cocked back, the pedal treads hanging relieved of the boot of the law.

A Constable Calls - Implication of violence + pressure

Arithmetic and fear, I sat staring at the polished holster

A Constable Calls - Fear of the law

But was there not a line of turnips where the seed ran out in the potato field?

A Constable Calls - narrator begins to ruminate over small details

I assumed small guilts and sat imagining the black hole in the barracks,

A Constable Calls - terror, child heightens it

His boot pushed off and the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked.

A Constable Calls - Bomb-like sound -> troubles; Powerful defeating the weak

There we were in the vaulted tunnel running

The Underground - Opening scene, extended metaphor for the underworld and the story of Orpheus and Eurydices

And me, me then like a fleet god gaining upon you before you turned to a reed

The Underground - Apprehensions, Physical love and the unknown

Some new white flower japped with crimson

The Underground - Innocence/Purity -> Virginity; Change, are they making a mistake

I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones, retracing the path back, lifting the buttons

The Underground - Shift in time, trusts his decision

Bared and tensed as I am, all attention for your step following and damned if I look back.

The Underground - won't make the same mistake as orpheus, fully trusts his decision

Up, black, striped and damasked like the chasuble at a funeral mass, the skunk's tail paraded the skunk.

The Skunk - Opening line, unusual for a love poem

The refrigerator whinnied into silence. My desk light softened beyond the verandah.

The Skunk - Alone, spotlight

After eleven years I was composing love-letters again, broaching the word 'wife' like a stored cask,

The Skunk - almost a return to the underground, matures/gets better over time

And there she was, the intent and glamorous, ordinary, mysterious skunk, mythologized, demythologized, snuffing the boards five feet beyond me.

The Skunk - Seeing his wife after an extended period of time and how his appreciation still exists but in another form

Your head-down, tail-up hunt in a bottom drawer for the black plunge-line nightdress.

The Skunk - His wife takes on the appearance of the skunk

'I'll just run out and get him. The weather here's so good, he took the chance to do a bit of weeding.'

A Call - His Dad still acts like if he were younger

So I saw him down on his hands and knees beside the leek rig, touching, inspecting, separating one stalk from the other

A Call - Silence, humility, fragility, care linking to precision and skill

Gently pulling up everything not tapered, frail and leafless, pleased to feel each little weed-root break, but rueful also...

A Call - Metaphor for his old-age and self-awareness

Then found myself listening to the amplified grave ticking of hall clocks

A Call - mortality, hall clocks will at one point stop ticking

Next thing he spoke and I nearly said I loved him.

A Call - Poignant closing line, filled with love and regret