What does Seamus Heaney tell us about what it means to be human?
Opened Ground by Seamus Heaney is a collection of poems that deal mostly with events that occured in Heaney’s life and show his perspectives on them. Heaney’s poems focus especially on his early life and his ties with Ireland, the country in which he was raised. Heaney uses a lot of vivid nature imagery to describe the effect that the land of Ireland had on him. Heaney also describes his complex relations with his family and how they developed over time. Seamus Heaney’s work Opened Ground establishes the central concern of hard relationships with family using nature imagery, metaphor, and the motif of time.
The poem from Opened Ground that I will examine is “A Call”. A Call is a poem that interests me because it dives deeper into the relationship between Heaney and his father. In earlier poems from Opened Ground, Heaney builds a story about the relationship between him and his father that gave the reader the sense that while Heaney looked up to his father, he felt disconnected from him in many ways. For example, Heaney always refers to his father as “my father” and never refers to him as ‘dad’ or by his name. This cold diction of ‘Father’ shows Heaney's disconnect and difficult relationship he had with his father. “A Call” occurs much later in Heaney’s life when he is an adult calling his parents and asking to speak to his father. The devices of nature imagery and metaphor allow us to better understand Heaney’s relationship with his father. When Heaney is waiting for his father to get on the phone his mother tells him his father is weeding, and Heaney starts an extended metaphor about how how he sees his father weeding. Heanye uses vivid imagery to describe exactly how he imagines his father weeding “gently pulling up / everything, not tapered frail and leafless, / Pleased to feel each little weed-root break,” (lines 6-8) This vivid description of his father’s actions and feelings shows just how much Heaney understands and knows his father that he is able to put himself in that very moment where his father is working. Heaney has always admired his fathers work in his poetry and that theme continues in “A Call”. Heaney’s focus on family and the land in this poem begins to show that Heaney feels the meaning of being human is respecting and embracing the land and the people around you. This first section of the poem is meant to illustrate Heaney’s deep connection with his father which leads up to the central concern presented in the next three stanzas.
The central concern becomes evident in the last three stanzas of “A Call”, but there is still some mystery surrounding what the source of the concern is. Heaney uses the motif of time when referencing the ticking of a hall clock that can be heard in the background of the phone call “I found myself listening to / The amplified grave ticking of hall clocks” (lines 9-10). The auditory imagery of the hall clock instills a sense that time is winding down which is causing the central concern. Heaney then explores the idea of death and how it is linked to time winding down and a lack of time. While Heaney does not explicitly state who or what is running out of time, this allows the reader to infer that his father is reaching old age and Heaney does not have much time left with him. The final line in this poem is very powerful and develops the reader’s perception of Heaney’s relationship with his father “Next thing he spoke and I nearly said I loved him.” (line 15). Heaney does not tell us what his father spoke about, that is unimportant to him, the only thing he could think about and write about their conversation is that he didn't tell his father he loved him. A sense of regret is instilled here which puts everything that prefaced this line into context. Everything that Heaney wrote about his father, the land in which his father worked, and time which was seemingly slipping away was meant to preface the regret he felt for not even being able to tell his father he loved him.
This regret that Heaney felt shows what he believes it means to be human. He believes in taking as much time as possible to appreciate his family and the world around him because we don't have very much time on earth and sometimes we fail to spend that time in a meaningful way. I believe Heaney wrote this poem because he regretted not having resolved his issues with his father sooner. There is not enough time to wait to show love to the people close to you, because at some point it will be too late.
Our Deepest human needs are to be seen and heard, to feel connected.
