The Swing

Fingertips just tipping you
would send you

Every bit as far – once you
got
going –

As a big push in
the back.

Sooner or later,

We all learned one by
one to
go sky
high,

Backward and forward in the open
shed,

Toeing and Rowing
and jack-knifing through
air.

\*

Not Fragonard. Nor Brueghel. It
was more

Hans Memling’s light of heaven off green grass,

Light over fields and hedges, the shed-mouth

Sunstruck and expectant, the bedding-straw

Piled to one side, like a Nativity

Foreground
and background
waiting for the figures.

And then, in the middle ground,
the swing itself

With an old lopsided sack in the loop of it,

Perfectly still, hanging like pulley-slack,

A lure let down to tempt the soul to rise.

\*

Even so, we favoured the
earthbound. She

Sat there as majestic as an empress

Steeping her swollen feet one at a time

In the enamel basin, feeding it

Every now and again with an opulent

Steaming arc from a kettle on the floor

Beside her. The plout of
that was music

To our ears, her smile a mitigation.

Whatever light the goddess had once shone

Around her favourite coming from the bath

Was what was needed then: there should have been

Fresh linen, ministrations by attendants,

Procession and amazement. Instead, she took

Each rolled elastic stocking and
drew it on

Like the life she would not fail and was not

Meant for. And once, when she’d scoured the basin,

She came and sat to please us on the swing,

Neither out of place nor in her element,

Just tempted by it for a moment only,

Half-retrieving something half-confounded.

Instinctively we knew to let her be.

\*

To start up by yourself, you
hitched the rope

Against your backside and backed on into it

Until it tautened, then tiptoed and drove off

As hard as possible. You hurled a gathered thing

From the small of your own back into the air.

Your head swept low, you heard the whole shed creak.

\*

We all learned one by one to go
sky high.

Then townlands vanished into aerodromes,

Hiroshima made light of human bones,

Concorde’s neb migrated towards the future.

So who were we to want to hang back there

In spite of all?

     In spite of all, we sailed

Beyond ourselves and over and above

The rafters aching in our shoulderblades,

The give and take of branches in our arms

## Context

A sequence evoking a time, a place and
family. In the 1940s, a large open shed in the rural farmyard in Northern
Ireland; brothers and sisters, Heaney talks about the ‘herd life’ and ‘sofa in
the forties,’ and their mother using the swing in the family barn.

Heaney is able to swing between the
extraordinary/commonplace, heavenly/earthly,

Idealism/reality.

Learning to swing is a metaphor for
living a successful life.

**Reference to artists**

Fragonard: Too idealised, too ‘Romantic.’

Breugel: Too harsh, brutal and impersonal

Memling: Exhibits a greater whimsy, yet grounded
in a rural romance. Sense of the spiritual and key elements of family.

## Action

**1st**
stanza

Establishes the place and setting.
However moment remains in a state of flux, it is simultaneously the now, the
before and the tomorrow. It is past tense however the movement established by
‘Heaney’, the ‘toeing and rowing and jack-knifing through air…’ and time,
eludes to the transient nature of the swing. It is a constant within the poem.
(and because the peom can
be seen as analogous for Heaney’s childhood, within Heaney’s life as well, the
repetition of ‘you’ eludes to personal experience)

**2nd**
Stanza

Establishlol noe of the swing and scene (is it majestic in reality
or only in his memories?) this is conveyed through the shed-mouth sunstruck and
expected. The mood shifts as the Heaney focus’ on the danger that I associated
with the swing.

**3rd**
Stanza

The poem becomes grounded in the female
form. Again Heaney’s adoration of the female form comes to the fore. Heaney
emphasizes the sacrifice his mother made to help him ‘swing high.’

**4th**
Stanza

There is a sense of regret, a sombre tone
– ‘there should have been…like the life she would not fail and was not meant
for.’ – ‘in her element’ – ‘half retrieving something’ – ‘we knew to let her be.’
The women is there to please the speaker, ‘please us on the swing.’ The
sacrifice Heaney is reflecting on what his mother did to help him be
successful.

**5th**
Stanza

Heaney describes the feeling of swinging,
and the process. This can be taken as a metaphor for success.

**6th**
Stanza

There is a time shift, described through
the horrors of exhilaration. Heaney comments on the futility of human success.
Juxtaposing his own swing success with the death of thousands. Perhaps putting
it into perspective individual success, whilst commenting on
the danger of progress and success

. The stanza is very reflective. Involves
enjambment to question and respond. “In spite of all we sailed.’

== SymbolismBig butsWithin the poem the swing stays the same
but the individuals riding it change. Within the poem
Heaney is able to descend into his own history and the history of the world
around him. Within ‘The Swing’ he is able to outline the significance of
individual achievement while demonstrating its insignificance. The mother is
‘majestic as an empress… tempted by’ the swing for ‘a moment.’ Yet the candid
nature of the moment is lost to ‘concorde’s neb.’ Heaney suggests that these
moments, our success are enjoy by but few people, yet are no less important. ==