I thought this poem was particularly interesting,because it again dealt with the issue of what the role of a poet is. Should he be actively involved in the political ordeals and the violence that Northern Ireland was submerged in?
The first stanza immediately tells us that he is talking about the troubles that northern Ireland, “that was a time when the times were also in spasm”. And here again, Heaney makes clear that he believes that the poet should distance himself, because although he feels he was involved and did address in the political drama and all the violence that was going on, (he was “mired in attachment”), the people around him felt that he should be more active, like a Lorca figure, as he mentions in “Singing School”. That they want him to do more, or at least that he felt that the people wanted him to do more becomes clear when he says “they began to pronounce me a feeder off battlefield”.
And he did flee from this, “so I mastered new rungs of the air to survey out of reach”, which then also reminds us of his inherent feeling of always being an outsider observing and commenting on what’s going on in the group that he feels he cannot be part of, he will always be ‘an inner émigré’. However, although he escaped by making his ‘first flight’, it is interesting to note that Heaney does not feel threatened or put down by the people’s response. He uses these critics to his advantage and grows stronger as a poet from them, for he says; “the onslaught of winds I would welcome and climb at the top of my bent”.