A Constable Calls by Seamus Heaney: A Personal Response

INTRODUCTION

A Constable Calls combines three important themes in Heaney's poetry. Firstly it is an autobiographical childhood poem that links back to poems like "Digging" and "Death of a Naturalist". Secondly it's a poem that communicates a moment of epiphany - an experience of intense, powerful and vivid insight, that can be found in poems like "Sunlight" and "The Seed Cutters". Finally it's a poem that links to the political and cultural conflicts that existed in Northern Ireland during Heaney's childhood - and still exist to some extent in Northern Ireland today. Other poems that engage with these ideas are quite wide ranging, from "The Other Side" to "Bogland" and "Act of Union."

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE POEM

The poem takes a routine - perhaps annual - visit by a local official who is checking and recording the crops and assets of the farm Heaney grew up on in County Derry. This is done for tax purposes. It will enable the British and protestant administration in Ulster to charge an accurate tax on Heaney's family.

The young Heaney - perhaps aged 10 watches his Roman Catholic father being questioned by a Protestant police constable. Heaney's eye focuses on his bicycle, cap, ledger - in which the figures are recorded and finally revolver and holster. Then the poem records the last couple of questions asked by the constable and Heaney's emotional and internal response to them. Finally the poem returns to a description of the constable as he prepares to leave.

CHILDHOOD / AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The poem recounts an incident in Heaney's childhood. It takes place in the family home with his father. Seamus is a marginal passive figure in the poem observing the main action and taking in details. It is written with a first person narrative voice we take to be Heaney's. And its written in the past tense.

Again Heaney concentrates on an apparent ordinary incident but draws out from this key and familiar topics.

However the poem is dominated by what Heaney observes. He focuses on the props of power and authority - like "Follower". However in "A Constable Calls" power and authority are located with the constable, not the father whose only response to the constable is a weak "No".

EPIPHANY

Heaney makes the subject of the poem really stand out. One way he does this is the selective but detailed descriptions of the constable and the paraphernalia and symbols of his power for example, 'The line of its pressure ran like a bevel
In his slightly sweating hair.' This line shows a very specific detail that perhaps only a child would notice. The constable 'sweating' might indicate the heat of the afternoon but also helps create tension.

Heaney creates a tension in the poem with references for example to the constable's 'boot', the 'cocked' dynamo, and the line that helps underpin the tension 'Arithmetic and fear.' is very effective. I think also the casual way the symbols of power are mentioned and they are often associated with light, for example, 'Heating in sunlight, the "spud" Of the dynamo gleaming'and polished holster'

POLITICAL / CULTURAL CONFLICT

Political and cultural conflict is introduced at the start of the poem with Heaney's narrative voice focussing on the presence of the constable. Heaney's detailed description of the constable's objects picks up his strangeness. There is something out of place and unexpected about him in this family home.

We can see the constable as a symbol or representative of authority and power in Ulster at the time. And the poem records the family's response to that power partly in Heaney's father's lie but also in the line 'Arithmetic and fear.'

Suppressed physical violence is an important feature of this poem. It exists as a presence or a possibility throughout the poem. It is explicit in the references to the "revolver" and "polished holster" as well as the "baton-case" in the seventh stanza. The young Heaney cannot help "staring" at the gun - a child's privilege. However there are also less direct references to republican violence - a bomb attack on a barracks referred to in the line "...Imagining the black hole in the barracks." and the final "...And the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked."