In the Attic This four poem sequence eventually reaches its own starting-point. This apparent non-sense is explained by the stages that set Heaney in compositional reverse: a poet begins to notice within himself some of the drawbacks of the ageing process relating to memory; he recalls his grandfather who demonstrated similar memory-loss in his own life-time, a mental confusion relating to a character from the children’s novel Treasure Island; the novel acts as a metaphor reflecting aspects of the poet’s existence; the mistakenly identified character is part of a key event in the original book. Turn it all round and Heaney’s [...]