Making Strange
Such a negotiation between the opposing forces of differing identities
is typified in another poem from Station Island entitled ëMaking
Strangeí as it attempts to chart a middle ground. The poem is an
example of the attempt to transform linguistic divisions into a hybrid
ëmiddle voiceí of mixed diction that allows for contradictory cultural
messages to coexist. The speaker in the poem adopts the role of
cultural translator:
I stood between them,
the one with his travelled intelligence
and tawny containment,
his speech like the twang of a bowstring,and another, unshorn and bewildered
in the tubs of his wellingtons,
smiling at me for help,
faced with this stranger Iíd brought him.^60There are cultural, linguistic and class differences between these two
people.
With the ëcunning middle voiceí urging the speaker to be both
ëadeptí and ëdialectí, the translator refuses to take the side of either
person; he must ëlove the cut of this travelled oneí and also the
countryside of ësweetbriar after the rainí which is the home of the
local man. The poetic speaker courageously becomes a middle man
who, ëreciting my pride/ in all that I knewí, begins ëto make strangeí
what is known ëat the same recitationí. Allegiances to either the local
or the cosmopolitan are shown to be a matter of perspective. Even so,
the speakerís position as a middle man is uncomfortable as he and we
are presented on the one hand with the vulnerability of the ëunshorní
person who, well-intentioned, smiles at the speaker ëfor helpí. On the
other hand, there is the self-confident ëcontainmentí and implicit
smugness of ëthe one with his travelled intelligenceí.
60 Heaney, ëMaking Strangeí, Station Island, p.32.