begins to question the limits of representation and boundary lines.
Heaneyís challenge to dividing lines, including that between aes-
thetics and politics, is not accidental or superfluous.
Images of sea crossings, journeys, balance and lines resonate
throughout Seeing Things. In the title poem, there is another ëboat/
Sailing through airí connecting the ethereal with the sea as realms into
the marvellous and indefinite. The final image of ëMarkingsí is of two
men mowing a sea of corn, who are imagined rowing ëthe steady
earthí. The earth is presented marked by the lines of a football pitch, a
ëhouse foundationí and a ëfield of grazingí. The speaker observes: ëAll
these things entered you/ As if they were both the door and what came
through it/ they marked the spot, marked time and held it open.í^83 The
lines of language and territory enter the subject and define her/him.
The issue of land markings is crucial to anti-colonial projects. In the
poem the lines are not given but created and subject to change since
ëtimeí although marked is ëheld opení. To write from the dividing line
is to indicate how precarious is such a division. As in ëThe First
Glossí it is to
Take hold of the shaft of the pen.
Subscribe to the first step taken.
from a justified line
into the margin.^84The Irish writer plans to transgress the line justified by others but, as
is already seen with the problematic of decolonization, the justified
line defines the margin and the margin defines the justified line. The
monks at Clonmacnoise and the crew of the ship see that the other
side of the line may not be separate from them. This implies that to
think of cultures or sides of the line as uncontaminated or self-
contained is misguided. In Seeing Things Heaneyís presentation of
spaces imaginative and territorial cannot effectively be cordoned off.
This creates an anti-sectarian vision of representation that denies the
authority of territorial and ideological apartheid.
Mark Patrick Hederman maintains the necessity for Irish poetry
to lead the population through a ëpsychic hinterlandí into a fifth
83 Ibid., ëMarkingsí, p.9.
84 Heaney, ëSweeney Redivivusí, Station Island, p.97.