The chill wind of conscience, crime and punishment blows through the open hayshed and child-Heaney prays for salvation from above ( I lift up my eyes) be it divine or from the big screen population of a second Kubrick blockbuster ( with the apes). Memory of the big-screen pistol bouncing to earth (tumbling from over the door of the world) transports Heaney back to the age of seven or so ( nineteen forty-eight or nine) … he and his siblings have disobeyed the rules ( we have transgressed) and taken the pistol apart ( it lies there, broken in bits). In brief it was incongruous in an Ulster farmhouse: the thing was out of place.Īble to watch occasional films in the 1940s on the big screen of a local hall ( I lift up my eyes) he recalls first sight of a horse pistol in (unnamed by him) ’Barry Lyndon’, a Stanley Kubrick period-piece set in Ireland.
It conjured up questions about the Dick Turpin legend in young Heaney’s mind ( Great North Road? … tricorn hat?) that he could not reconcile with the humdrum local neighbourhood (Bob Cushley with his jennet? Ned Kane in his pony and trap?).
Ilift twin full#
Heaney recalls the weapon in great detail: the intricate decoration of its grip ( brass inlay smooth in the stock) its primed state ( hammers cocked like lugs) the patterning ( mottled) of its twin barrels the evidence of discharge ( sooty nostrilled) and its angled readiness for a duel ( levelled).ĭeliberately placed beyond reach of young curiosity ( bracketed over the door) in an upstairs room, it was viewed as an imitation weapon with weight and mass ( ghost heft) that children’s itchy fingers longed to feeI and could imagine themselves handling ( two fingers on two triggers) for all its adult size ( the full of your hand of haft). The poem is built around an emblematic eighteenth century horse-pistol that sat on a wall in the Heaney family home, long an object of both mystery and interest to Heaney and his siblings.
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