Twice Shy: Exploring Seamus Heaney's Love Poems

There are poems for her within each of his twelve collections which spanned over forty years. According to Foster (2020, p. 70), his love poems from Field Work, including "The Skunk", 'demonstrate an ease and accomplishment often lacking in the genre'. His poems chart their shared journey from their initial caution during their first walk in "Twice Shy", right through to 'the renewal of love in the ambulance' after his stroke in 2006 in "Chanson d'Aventure" (McCrum, 2009). They demonstrate how love changes over a lifetime and the lessons in love and harmony that are learned along the way. 

In a lovely letter to his close friend, Seamus Deane, on the 9th of December 1964 while in St. Joseph’s Training College, Heaney shared the news of his engagement to Marie and their plans to marry the following August. He said ‘We are very happy and believe that we can remain so for a lifetime.’ He proclaimed that he had known from the beginning that 'she was the girl to hunt – but now she is not so much of a quarry, more a way of life.’ (Reid, 2023, p. 4). He would later explain the significance of his wedding in conversation with Dennis O'Driscoll (2008, p. 254), describing the event as an ‘unhoming’ where the first circle is broken and the bond between parent and child is forever changed.  

He wrote:  

‘You have to be pretty immature not to feel the life-change at such a time. That moment in the taxi, for example, when you both drive away and the faces and places vanish, ‘to be renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.’ It’s hallucinatory all right, and that’s why it stays with you.’ 

In one of his earliest poems, “Scaffolding”, he made the bold statement on the solid foundations of their partnership, as he wrote: 

'So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be 

Old bridges breaking between you and me 

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall 

Confident that we have built our wall.' 

 

This poem was one of three poems, alongside “Digging” and “Storm on the Island” which Heaney published in the New Statesman magazine in December 1964. Charles Monteith, the poetry editor at Faber and Faber publishing house, reached out to Heaney about publishing his debut collection, explaining that his work showed definite promise (Faber, 2019, p. 287). Death of a Naturalist was released just two years later and paved the way for an extraordinary career in literature which would ultimately culminate in his Nobel prize win in 1995. “Scaffolding” is one of several love poems from his first collection which is indicative of her role as a major factor in his development as a poet (Parker, p. 72). Due to the incredible wisdom and sentiment within this poem, many Irish couples include it in their wedding ceremony. 

However, there is another lesser-known tribute to his wife in Death of a Naturalist, titled ‘Poem’ where he demonstrates his hopes that he will become the husband that Marie deserves. He proclaims: 

‘Love, you shall perfect for me this child 

Whose small imperfect limits would keep breaking: 

Within new limits now arrange the world 

And square the circle: four walls and a ring.’ 

 

Heaney described his initial hopes for an enduring partnership from their very first walk together in his poem “Twice Shy”, which he gifted to Marie shortly after the event. He had initially been considering calling it ‘On the Embankment’, however, eventually settled on the final title, “Twice Shy” which alludes to their past experiences and their caution as they took their first tentative steps in their lives together. 

The poem concludes with the revelation: 

'Still waters running deep 

Along the embankment walk' 

Meanwhile, in ‘Tate’s Avenue’, which is featured in Heaney’s second last collection, District and Circle, he conveyed the difference between the excitement and innocence of young love and the deeper understanding which developed between himself and his wife over time. By the end of the poem, Heaney has reached the powerful conclusion that: 

'When we moved. I had your measure and you had mine.' 

 

‘The Clothes Shrine’ from his first collection after the millennium, Electric Light, detailed the ‘whole new sweetness’ of living together during the early days of their marriage. However, the poem also acts as a platform on which to convey his admiration of Marie's abilities to balance life as a busy working wife and mother. In order to emphasise this point, he compares her to St. Brigid who is remembered for her compassion and nurturing qualities, and writes: 

'The damp and slump and unfair 

Drag of the workaday 

Made light of and got through 

As usual, brilliantly.' 

Describing the significance of their relocation to Co. Wicklow in 1972, he told Michael Parker (1993, p. 167) that ‘it takes a while to get to know how to be married. What happened to us personally as a couple, as a family, was that we got married again in a different way. We started life again together.’ 

 

In her recent article in the Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan, the daughter of a dear friend of Heaney, Tom Flanagan, put it best when she said that ‘the point of the entire operation was always Marie, the quarry turned way of life’ (Flanagan, 2024). 

 

To learn more about Heaney’s beautiful love poems, visit our exhibition Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again where you can immerse yourself in his incredible life and work. 

 

-----

Sources

• ​​Faber, T. (2019), Faber and Faber: The Untold Story. 1st ed. London: Faber and Faber Limited. 
• ​Flanagan, C. (2024), The Atlantic’s January Cover Story: Caitlin Flanagan on What the Poet Seamus Heaney Gave Her. The Atlantic, 9 December.  
• ​O'Driscoll, D. (2009), Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney. 2nd ed. London: Faber and Faber Limited. 
• ​Parker, M. (1993), Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet. 1st ed. Iowa: University of Iowa Press.