A Constable Calls by Seamus Heaney
The Constable Calls
By Seamus Heaney
A Constable Calls is the second in a sequence of six poems entitled 'Singing School' which concludes Heaney's fourth collection 'North' (1975). The poem is a vivid description of an incident from the poet's childhood - a policeman making an official visit to his father's farm at Mossbawn to record tillage returns. There is something grotesquely bizarre about an armed representative of the law travelling by bicycle around the Ulster countryside to record agricultural statistics. Although the incident is described through the impressionable eyes of a child, we are also aware of the wiser presence of the adult Heaney. On a broader level the poem accurately records the sense of resentment and alienation felt by the Catholic Nationalist minority community in an artificially created State governed by the descendants of Protestant planters. The constable is an agent of this repressive sectarian regime. The Royal Ulster Constabulary has always had a predominantly Protestant membership and has traditionally been unequivocally pro-Unionist.
In the opening movement of the poem the constable's bicycle is described in language that is detailed, unemotional.
His bicycle stood at the window-sill,
The rubber cowl of a mud-splasher
Skirting the front mudguard,
Its fat black handlegrips
Heating in sunlight, the 'spud'
Of the dynamo gleaming and cocked back,
The pedal treads hanging relieved
Of the boot of the law.
However, its different component parts are subliminally associated with the repressive power of an alien law. The 'handlegrips' suggest handcuffs and the 'dynamo gleaming and cocked back' becomes a gun primed for firing. The second verse climaxes with the pedals 'relieved Of the boot of the law', hinting at the brutal physical force used by the R.U.C. against Catholics at different periods in the troubled history of the Northern Ireland State, but particularly during the Civil Rights marches of 1969. By contrast the
By Seamus Heaney
A Constable Calls is the second in a sequence of six poems entitled 'Singing School' which concludes Heaney's fourth collection 'North' (1975). The poem is a vivid description of an incident from the poet's childhood - a policeman making an official visit to his father's farm at Mossbawn to record tillage returns. There is something grotesquely bizarre about an armed representative of the law travelling by bicycle around the Ulster countryside to record agricultural statistics. Although the incident is described through the impressionable eyes of a child, we are also aware of the wiser presence of the adult Heaney. On a broader level the poem accurately records the sense of resentment and alienation felt by the Catholic Nationalist minority community in an artificially created State governed by the descendants of Protestant planters. The constable is an agent of this repressive sectarian regime. The Royal Ulster Constabulary has always had a predominantly Protestant membership and has traditionally been unequivocally pro-Unionist.
In the opening movement of the poem the constable's bicycle is described in language that is detailed, unemotional.
His bicycle stood at the window-sill,
The rubber cowl of a mud-splasher
Skirting the front mudguard,
Its fat black handlegrips
Heating in sunlight, the 'spud'
Of the dynamo gleaming and cocked back,
The pedal treads hanging relieved
Of the boot of the law.
However, its different component parts are subliminally associated with the repressive power of an alien law. The 'handlegrips' suggest handcuffs and the 'dynamo gleaming and cocked back' becomes a gun primed for firing. The second verse climaxes with the pedals 'relieved Of the boot of the law', hinting at the brutal physical force used by the R.U.C. against Catholics at different periods in the troubled history of the Northern Ireland State, but particularly during the Civil Rights marches of 1969. By contrast the