Storm on the Island

"Storm on the Island" is a poem by one Ireland's foremost writers, Seamus Heaney. In the poem, an unspecified narrator talks about an isolated island community. These islanders live in fear of a coming storm, and have no trees for shelter. On the surface level, the poem appears to be about nature's ultimate power over humankind. The anticipation of disaster, however, can also be interpreted as a comment on humankind's own capacity for violence, perhaps in relation to the political tensions in Northern Ireland during the 20th century (which became, soon after the poem's publication in 1966, what's now known as the Troubles). 

Storm on the Island

We are prepared: we build our houses squat,

Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.

This wizened earth has never troubled us

With hay, so, as you see, there are no stacks

Or stooks that can be lost. Nor are there trees 5

Which might prove company when it blows full

Blast: you know what I mean – leaves and branches

Can raise a tragic chorus in a gale

So that you can listen to the thing you fear

Forgetting that it pummels your house too. 10

But there are no trees, no natural shelter.

You might think that the sea is company,

Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs

But no: when it begins, the flung spray hits

The very windows, spits like a tame cat 15

Turned savage. We just sit tight while wind dives

And strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo,

We are bombarded by the empty air.

Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

SEAMUS HEANEY