Westering

In this final piece (the only poem referring specifically to California) Heaney draws on a series of physical and metaphysical ‘spheres’: moon, earth, self, soul. He divulges his emotional responses to home and faith. He paints his narrative against bleak landscapes: the moon’s surface, Calvary (where Christ was crucified), Ireland in trouble. He uses the gravitational pull between objects, physical and spiritual, to illustrate things caught up in an inexorable clockwork. In this final piece, the poet admits he is ‘disposed ( ) towards origin and the inward path’(DOD142). If Heaney was ‘unhappy and at home’ in Tollund Man (in this collection), his sabbatical in America has taken him away from home but is not delivering much that cheers him […]