Clearances

Poetry › Seamus Heany (1986–87)

Seamus Heaney’s “Clearances” (1986–87) is a sonnet sequence written in memory of his mother. Across eight poems, Heaney recalls small, domestic moments that take on sacred significance—peeling potatoes, folding sheets, attending Mass—transforming ordinary acts of family labor into metaphors of love, inheritance, and grief. The sequence meditates on intimacy, loss, and continuity, finding redemption in everyday ritual.

In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984 She taught me what her uncle once taught her: How easily the biggest coal block split If you got the grain and hammer angled right. The sound of that relaxed alluring blow, Its co-opted and obliterated echo, 5 Taught me to hit, taught me to loosen, Taught me between the hammer and the block To face the music. Teach me now to listen, To strike it rich behind the linear black. 1 A cobble thrown a hundred years ago 10 Keeps coming at me, the first stone Aimed at a great-grandmother's turncoat brow. The pony jerks and the riot's on. She's crouched low in the trap Running the gauntlet that first Sunday 15 Down the brae to Mass at a panicked gallop. He whips on through the town to cries of “Lundy!” Call her “The Convert.” “The Exogamous Bride.” Anyhow, it is a genre piece Inherited on my mother's side 20 And mine to dispose with now she's gone. Instead of silver and Victorian lace, The exonerating, exonerated stone. 2 Polished linoleum shone there. Brass taps shone. The china cups were very white and big— 25 An unchipped set with sugar bowl and jug. The kettle whistled. Sandwich and tea scone Were present and correct. In case it run, The butter must be kept out of the sun. And don't be dropping crumbs. Don't tilt your chair. 30 Don't reach. Don't point. Don't make noise when you stir. It is Number 5, New Row, Land of the Dead, Where grandfather is rising from his place With spectacles pushed back on a clean bald head To welcome a bewildered homing daughter 35 Before she even knocks. “What's this? What's this?” And they sit down in the shining room together. 3 When all the others were away at Mass I was all hers as we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one 40 Like solder weeping off the soldering iron: Cold comforts set between us, things to share Gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes From each other's work would bring us to our senses. 45 So while the parish priest at her bedside Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying And some were responding and some crying I remembered her head bent towards my head, Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives— 50 Never closer the whole rest of our lives. 4 Fear of affectation made her affect Inadequacy whenever it came to Pronouncing words “beyond her.” Bertold Brek. She'd manage something hampered and askew 55 Every time, as if she might betray The hampered and inadequate by too Well-adjusted a vocabulary. With more challenge than pride, she'd tell me, “You Know all them things.” So I governed my tongue 60 In front of her, a genuinely well- Adjusted adequate betrayal Of what I knew better. I'd naw and aye And decently relapse into the wrong Grammar which kept us allied and at bay. 70 5 The cool that came off sheets just off the line Made me think the damp must still be in them But when I took my corners of the linen And pulled against her, first straight down the hem And then diagonally, then flapped and shook 75 The fabric like a sail in a cross-wind, They made a dried-out undulating thwack. So we'd stretch and fold and end up hand to hand For a split second as if nothing had happened For nothing had that had not always happened 80 Beforehand, day by day, just touch and go, Coming close again by holding back In moves where I was x and she was o Inscribed in sheets she'd sewn from ripped-out flour sacks. 6 In the first flush of the Easter holidays 85 The ceremonies during Holy Week Were highpoints of our Sons and Lovers phase. The midnight fire. The paschal candlestick. Elbow to elbow, glad to be kneeling next To each other up there near the front 90 Of the packed church, we would follow the text And rubrics for the blessing of the font. As the hind longs for the streams, so my soul. . . Dippings. Towellings. The water breathed on. The water mixed with chrism and with oil. 95 Cruet tinkle. Formal incensation And the psalmist's outcry taken up with pride: Day and night my tears have been my bread. 7 In the last minutes he said more to her Almost than in all their life together. 100 “You'll be in New Row on Monday night And I'll come up for you and you'll be glad When I walk in the door . . . Isn't that right?” His head was bent down to her propped-up head. She could not hear but we were overjoyed. 105 He called her good and girl. Then she was dead, The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned And we all knew one thing by being there. The space we stood around had been emptied Into us to keep, it penetrated 110 Clearances that suddenly stood open. High cries were felled and a pure change happened. 8 I thought of walking round and round a space Utterly empty, utterly a source Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place 115 In our front hedge above the wallflowers. The white chips jumped and jumped and skited high. I heard the hatchet's differentiated Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh And collapse of what luxuriated 120 Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all. Deep-planted and long gone, my coeval Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole, Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere, A soul ramifying and forever 125 Silent, beyond silence listened for.

Introduction and Context

Seamus Heaney’s “Clearances” was published as a sonnet sequence within The Haw Lantern (1987) and composed in memory of his mother, Margaret Kathleen Heaney, who died in 1984. Across eight meditative sonnets, Heaney transforms intimate domestic recollections into scenes of revelation, where ordinary acts—peeling potatoes, folding linen, attending Mass—carry sacramental force. The poems follow a loose narrative arc, tracing a son’s movement from companionship through separation to a spiritual understanding of loss.

Formally, “Clearances” exemplifies Heaney’s gift for fusing classical structure with vernacular texture: the strict sonnet form disciplines the emotional overflow of grief, while the diction preserves the cadence of Ulster speech. Thematically, the sequence recalls Wordsworth’s belief that poetry arises from “emotion recollected in tranquility,” but Heaney situates this recollection within the ritualized work of a Catholic, working-class Irish household.

Critics have read “Clearances” as part of Heaney’s ongoing negotiation between private affection and public identity—an elegy that reconciles his role as poet of the Irish land with the inward son of a mother whose grace resided in labor and restraint. Like Joyce’s “The Dead,” the sequence ends with an image of quiet transcendence, where silence itself becomes a medium of communion.

Questions for Consideration

1. How does Heaney transform domestic labor—acts like peeling potatoes or folding sheets—into expressions of intimacy and sacred ritual?
2. What is the significance of the title “Clearances”? How might it operate simultaneously as a metaphor for land, death, and spiritual release?
3. In what ways does the sonnet form constrain or enhance the emotional resonance of the poem? How does Heaney’s control of rhythm mirror the “discipline” of grief?
4. Compare the role of memory here to its role in other modern elegies, such as T. S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding” or Philip Larkin’s “Church Going.” What similarities or tensions do you see?
5. How does religion function in “Clearances”? Is it a source of comfort, conflict, or aesthetic distance?
6. In Sonnet III (“When all the others were away at Mass”), what makes the act of peeling potatoes so profoundly symbolic?
7. How does Heaney use objects—coal, linen, flour sacks, the chestnut tree—as mnemonic devices linking the material world to emotional continuity?
8. Consider how language itself—Heaney’s use of dialect, diction, and mispronunciation (“Bertold Brek”)—becomes an inheritance between mother and son.
9. Compare the maternal relationship in “Clearances” with Heaney’s depiction of his father in “Follower” or “Digging.” How does gender shape the poet’s tone of remembrance?
10. What is the effect of ending the sequence with the image of the felled chestnut tree? How does this final gesture reconcile mortality with permanence?

Journal Prompts

1. Reflect on a domestic ritual or ordinary task that connects you to someone you’ve loved or lost. How might that act carry meaning beyond its utility, as it does in “Clearances”?
2. Heaney’s memory of “fluent dipping knives” fuses manual labor with tenderness. Write about a similar moment in your own experience where physical work revealed emotional truth.
3. Compare the treatment of grief and ritual in “Clearances” to another modern elegy—perhaps W. H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues,” Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” or Heaney’s own “Mid-Term Break.” What distinguishes Heaney’s tone and approach?
4. In “Clearances” III, Heaney recalls a time “when all the others were away at Mass.” What might this isolation suggest about his vocation as a poet—his position both inside and outside communal belief?
5. The “Convert” and “Exogamous Bride” in Sonnet I evoke sectarian histories of religion and identity in Northern Ireland. How does Heaney weave the political into the personal here?
6. In “Clearances,” touch—literal and symbolic—becomes a form of communication. How does physical gesture replace or deepen spoken language between mother and son?
7. Revisit Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” or Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey.” How does Heaney’s remembrance of domestic life compare to their meditations on natural retreat and spiritual renewal?
8. Consider how “Clearances” engages with silence—especially in its final lines (“Silent, beyond silence listened for”). What is the poet “listening for,” and what might that silence signify?
9. The poem honors female labor while situating it within Catholic ritual. How might “Clearances” serve as a quiet feminist revaluation of maternal work?
10. Write a short creative imitation of one sonnet in “Clearances”—a fourteen-line poem about a simple act (washing dishes, sweeping, mending) that becomes a meditation on connection and memory.