The Baler The solid, repetitive sound of a vital piece of agricultural machinery unearths deeper feelings in a convalescent Heaney: about mortality; about self; about a specific friend in memoriam. Heaney has hit upon something as familiar to him and as unquestioned as the heartbeat: the All day …Ongoing sound of the baler in operation; its clunk, like that of the heart we feel beating within us: cardiac-dull, So taken for granted. He is still feeling the effect of illness and emerging from sleep; it was evening before I came to and recognised the sounds of an annual event from the farming calendar as of annual tradition [...]