Poem Sensitive to his own break with his family’s traditional way of life and faced with three seismic life-challenges in the same 1960’s period: marriage, poetry and paid work in the academic sphere, Heaney dedicates this poem to his wife Marie Heaney née Devlin, confident that her support will help him achieve the full identity that might have been denied him had he picked up the reins of farming. Heaney offers his new wife an additional wedding vow: I shall perfect for you the child. He paints the picture of his younger persona: an industrious person, perhaps, not yet seriously [...]