Casualty
In the first few lines, Heaney shares a lot
of information about his character in simple terms. He barely has to say
anything and I can see the man, who I know is a regular in this pub or bar as
he only needs to gesture ‘toward the high shelf’ with his ‘weathered thumb’ to
make his order understood. The ‘discrete dumb-show’ was both easy to visualise
and almost sad – it made me think of someone resigned to his position, but not
wanting to admit the truth out loud. This sadness deepens when we learn he, as
a ‘dole-kept breadwinner’, both likely has a family to support and is
unemployed. The language is swishy and delicious – ‘showery dark’, ‘sidling
tact/turned observant back’, ‘sure-footed but too sly’ and the half-rhymes
shifting about from the A lines to the B lines add to the sense that something
is going to upset this scene. When we get to the graffiti – ‘PARAS THIRTEEN,
BOGSIDE NIL’ is a chilling detail of lives treated as a game, but ‘at home by
his own crowd’ makes the character himself feel caught up in this metaphor.
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