I
I shouldered a kind of manhood
stepping in to lift the coffins
of dead relations.
They had been laid out
in tainted rooms,
their eyelids glistening,
their dough-white hands
shackled in rosary beads.
Their puffed knuckles
had unwrinkled, the nails
were darkened, the wrists
obediently sloped.
The dulse-brown shroud,
the quilted satin cribs:
I knelt courteously
admiting it all
as wax melted down
and veined the candles,
the flames hovering
to the women hovering
behind me.
And always, in a corner,
the coffin lid,
its nail-heads dressed
with little gleaming crosses.
Dear soapstone masks,
kissing their igloo brows
had to suffice
before the nails were sunk
and the black glacier
of each funeral
pushed away.
II
Now as news comes in
of each neighbourly murder
we pine for ceremony,
customary rhythms:
the temperate footsteps
of a cortège, winding past
each blinded home.
I would restore
the great chambers of Boyne,
prepare a sepulchre
under the cupmarked stones.
Out of side-streets and bye-roads
purring family cars
nose into line,
the whole country tunes
to the muffled drumming
of ten thousand engines.
Somnambulant women,
left behind, move
through emptied kitchens
imagining our slow triumph
towards the mounds.
Quiet as a serpent
in its grassy boulevard
the procession drags its tail
out of the Gap of the North
as its head already enters
the megalithic doorway.
III
When they have put the stone
back in its mouth
we will drive north again
past Strang and Carling fjords
the cud of memory
allayed for once, arbitration
of the feud placated,
imagining those under the hill
disposed like Gunnar
who lay beautiful
inside his burial mound,
though dead by violence
and unavenged.
men said that he was chanting
verses about honour
and that four lights burned
in corners of the chamber:
which opened then, as he turned
with a joyful face
to look at the moon.
Written in three parts that denote three different time periods.
The first part or stanza is about his childhood and dealing with loss.
The second part is about violence in Ireland and recent history.
The third part is about the immediate future as well as ancient past, which entails a blending time shift.
The word "rites" in the title refers to a religious ceremony or routine. A routine which can bring comfort.
Heaney would help with the Catholic ritual of bringing the dead home. He tracks his thoughts through time shifts.
At the end of the poem, he could be suggesting that burial chambers are religiously and politically neutral, and that in death, people may finally attain the serenity of Gunnar.
Personal pronoun, making this rather biographical.
Emotional weight.
With adulthood comes responsibility.
Belongs to the lexical field of "death" and also links to the title of the poem.
Another word that belongs in the aforementioned lexical field.
Negative imagery.
Graphic imagery of decomposition.
Could be referring to how religion imprisons people and causes violence.
Used for prayer rituals.
Another graphic imagery of death.
More imagery of imprisonment and a negative view towards religion.
Cheap.
Juxtaposition with the word "cribs." Old and young.
Expensive. Juxtaposition with the word "dulse."
Death comes at any age, old and young alike.
Further imagery of obedience.
Positive imagery as this stanza is based on childhood.
Further positive imagery.
Repetition which compares women to flames. Perhaps suggesting they are weak as they are passive sufferers in a patriarchal society.
Religious imagery.
Easy to carve.
Water imagery representing the depth of emotion.
Further water imagery.
Time shift with new stanza, suggesting it's based on a different period of time, in this case recent history.
Oxymoron suggesting pointless violence.
Religion causing violence but people looking to it in times of grief.
The people who follow the coffin, could be referencing a sort of journey.
A triple entendre. Blinded with tears, blinded with religion or perhaps referring to the tradition of drawing the blinds at a house in the event of a death.
Another time shift.
Procession where everyone's together.
Another reference to a form of journey.
Sleepy or dazed.
Men went to war, women stayed at home.
Religious imagery, referring to the original sin.
Makes the procession sound like a form of creature, as if grief itself is an animal.
Used by the IRA to deal arms.
Interesting juxtaposition with the "Gap of the North" as megalithic is rather ancient, yet the Gap is more relevant in modern life.
Stone over the mouth of the doorway, which could suggest a suppression of emotions or imprisonment.
Time shift along with another reference to a kind of journey.
Forgetting past events.
Political lexical field.
Nordic God, religious imagery.
Good can come from violence.
Unfinished business.
Positive imagery. Links to the candle flames in the first stanza.
Positive imagery.
A representation of limitless opportunities in the future.