Seamus Heaney, New Selected Poems 1988-2013

From Human Chain

‘Had I not been awake’

         “Had I not been awake” suggests that he was lying awake in bed. He hears  a strong wind that blew leaves off “the sycamore” (the specific tree in his garden?) and made a pattering sound on the roof. “Whirled” and “Pattered’ suggest the strength and energy of the wind – though “pattering” has relatively gentle associations – the wind is not a destructive gale. .  The leaves are described as “quick”. As well as meaning fast, ‘quick’ has an older sense which means being alive in a particularly intense way. Both senses are at work here: the whirling wind has suddenly stripped the tree of its living  (“quick”) leaves  and sent them falling, swiftly,  in numbers, on the roof with a pattering sound. The effect on the poet was to “get me up” – perhaps more in the sense of being roused rather than literally out of bed, though it could include that.  This  leads to him feeling that “the whole of me” is “a-patter”. “A-patter” echoes the pattering sounds of the leaves on the roof . This  parallelism between the sound of the wind-whirled leaves on the roof and the poet’s physical responses is striking. “A-patter’ could suggest the  relatively rapid pulse of somebody suddenly keenly alert to the wind’s energy and its associated sounds. This sense of being suddenly stimulated into life is developed further with the electric fence image. (Here we should think of a relatively low voltage fence used on farms rather than something penitentiary-like.) The current in the fence produces a ticking, which has some affinity with ‘to patter’,  and ticking (think of the vernacular word for one’s heart, ‘my ticker’) neatly suggests the poet’s quickened heart rate.

        In the third stanza the wind takes on a character beyond its physical impact. It seems to be possessed of  a degree of volition, if not in its unexpected arrival, then in the way it is made to seem as if it decides to leave. Furthermore, it is said to behave “dangerously”, an adverb that suggests some degree of deliberation in its behaviour. Personification becomes explicit with the wind, “Returning like an animal to its house.

          In his Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Chris Baldick defines allegory as, “A story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning”. A second meaning can be seen behind this poem’s ‘story’ of being awakened by wind and pattering leaves. That second meaning touches upon poetic inspiration. Poets often talk of being inspired. Some parts of a poem, or even a whole poem, seem to ‘arrive’, to come to them from some part of their minds beyond conscious control. They may be working on a subject, an idea, and putting to work aspects of their craft such as rhyme and rhythm along with their general and exceptional facility with language. These things are probably subject to their conscious control but then, as if these craft ‘things’ work like a summoning spell, an idea, an image, a rhythm may just come to them. Having perspired over the use of their craft, they are rewarded with something inspired. With these ideas about inspiration in mind, Heaney’s poem can be seen as having an allegorical meaning which makes it a poem about poetic inspiration.   The repeated emphasis on the need to have been awake, suggests the poet’s need to be mentally and emotionally alert to the possibility of inspiration. He needed to be awake in order to be open to it, but it had its own power to awaken him in a deeper sense, to ‘get him up’, to set him “a-patter”, to get him “ticking like an electric fence”.