[1811] From the Frontier of Writing

Guest poem submitted by Janice, <bluewhisky@>:

The tightness and the nilness round that space
when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect
its make and number and, as one bends his face

towards your window, you catch sight of more
on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent
down cradled guns that hold you under cover

and everything is pure interrogation
until a rifle motions and you move
with guarded unconcerned acceleration --

a little emptier, a little spent
as always by that quiver in the self,
subjugated, yes, and obedient.

So you drive on to the frontier of writing
where it happens again. The guns on tripods;
the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating

data about you, waiting for the squawk
of clearance; the marksman training down
out of the sun upon you like a hawk.

And suddenly you're through, arraigned yet freed,
as if you'd passed from behind a waterfall
on the black current of a tarmac road

past armor-plated vehicles, out between
the posted soldiers flowing and receding
like tree shadows into the polished windscreen.

	-- Seamus Heaney

Another favourite of mine. Exquisity Heaney: compact, compressed,
beautifully simple yet spiralling with meaning upon meaning. Here an
unfortunately commonplace event - a road check - is compared to the act of
writing, or perhaps the struggle of the act of writing. Again fraught with
tension, "pure interrogation", the poem captures the mood, the silent
watchfulness of a politically unstable area. There are various
interpretations of this poem and I personally find it difficult to pinpoint
what the Frontier of Writing is -- is it a space (mental or physical), an
idea or the act of writing itself? When I reach the last few lines however,
it doesn't even seem to matter -- "out between / the posted soldiers flowing
and receding / like tree shadows into the polished windscreen". It is an
image that is startling and stays with me.

Hope you enjoy it!

[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1807.html
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From: "Valerie Clarke" <val@>

This reminded me vividly of a morning in 1987.  We were living in Spain
at
the time, but on holiday in Ireland =96 in County Cavan, which is in the
Republic.  Thinking to buy cheaper petrol, we travelled the short
distance
to County Fermanagh, which is in

Northern Ireland, UK.  The countryside doesn't change, we still
travelled
along the same dreamy little country lane, but suddenly there was a
check
point, and soldiers peering in at us, guns at the ready, suspicious
about
our left hand drive car and our funny number plates.



He was so young, the soldier who questioned us, like a child with a toy
gun
pretending to be aggressive.  However, when he learned we lived near
Benidorm his young face relaxed and he was eager to tell us his Auntie
Jean
had a pub in Benidorm!



Of course we went in and out again from Northern Ireland without
problems,
but it was unsettling, and when my husband was asked indirectly whether
he
was Catholic or Protestant as he ordered a beer in a pub, we headed back
to
Cavan pretty smartly.



Seamus Heaney hits the nail on the head.






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