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Derek Mahon (Born: 1941)
Relevant background
- Derek Mahon grew up on the outskirts of Belfast. He was educated in Belfast, Dublin and Paris.
- His father worked in the local shipyard, his mother in a linen factory, the traditional local industries. Derek would have trained in the shipyards except that he failed his eye test. He went on to university as a second choice.
- His grandfather worked on the Titanic in Belfast shipyard as a boilermaker. The grandfather was a significant figure in the poet’s childhood.
- This poem recalls the various stages of his grandfather’s routine in his retirement. It is hard to know whether the grandfather lived in the poet’s house or whether the poem is based on frequent stopovers by the young Mahon in his grandfather’s house.
- Through the grandfather, Mahon shows us the typical hard working, sturdy and active lifestyle of the people of his Protestant working class community.
Summary
This poem by Derek Mahon is about his grandfather’s retirement years. The grandfather becomes an enigma [mystery]. He is a private man whose childhood remains a mystery to the poet, something ‘only he can recapture’. As the poem progresses Mahon portrays his grandfather as having a secretive personality: ‘discreetly’. He is evidently a man who doesn’t explain himself to his grandson. He seems to veil his inner self with a mask. From the beginning he acts the jovial or ‘humorous’ man. As a further disguise, the grandfather also plunges himself into activities, even in retirement.
He is a cagey character whose inner thoughts are not voiced. The poet uses his affectionate study of his grandfather to examine the issue of getting old and living in denial of the inevitability of death: ‘set the clock against the future’.
‘Grandfather’ is a fourteen-line poem, a sonnet. The second section of six lines, the sestet, follows the first section of eight lines, the octave. In this poem there isn’t a clear change of thought or tone between the octave and the sestet.
Without any explanation, the poet informs us that his grandfather had to retire with an apparent injury. Or else it is that he kept going until his body couldn’t take the strain any longer. The word ‘stretcher’ alerts us to a sad or tragic story. But it is far from that. ‘Wounded’ may refer to the grandfather’s hurt pride that he is no longer considered up to the task.
But the old man is perky and full of beans, doesn’t dwell with self-pity on his injury and quickly recovers: ‘humorous and he soon recovered’. Soon, according to the third line, he leaves his memories of cranes and boiler rooms behind him in the shipyard. As the fourth line shows, the grandfather recaptures earlier memories, his sense of childhood play. He re-enters his childhood, deliberately.
He becomes a law unto himself around the household. He is evidently tough and gets up early despite the cold. This was probably his shipyard routine. He develops a set retirement routine, up early at six to do various carpentry odd jobs. Just as Mahon doesn’t inform us of his grandfather’s past in any detail, he doesn’t dwell on what the old man actually makes with the tools. The poet merely notes the banging, the nails and the block of wood. The poet compares his grandfather to a four-year-old child up to childish mischief with ‘a block of wood’. Unlike many grandparents, he doesn’t seem to talk about the past or himself. He seems driven by the need to be busy at something practical. It seems as if the grandfather hasn’t much to say apart from wisecracks and he sets out to amuse himself.
In the sestet Mahon reveals further evidence that the grandfather is a law unto himself; he is a maverick or eccentric [odd] character. Like a rebellious child, he is never there when wanted: ‘Never there when you call’.
But mysteriously, he normally makes a big entrance after dark from wherever he had been, out in the world:
‘But after dark you hear his great boots thumping in the hall and in he comes’.
It is possible that the grandfather visits the pub but the poet doesn’t provide any definite detail. The word ‘thumping’ would suggest the noisy entrance of a man with a jar on him, but the octave reveals that it is a general tendency of the man to make a lot of noise about the house: ‘banging’.
Furthermore the grandfather seems very controlled in his actions every night before he goes to bed, with his locking and clock routine. There is some doubt as to whether he performs these tasks or plays a game with his eyes in which he stares at the door bolt and then the clock. The writer of these notes assumes the grandfather performs these two tasks as a nightly ritual to close the day. He then abruptly retires to his room and puts out his light.
The poet observes his grandfather locking up the house every night and setting the clock with his ‘shrewd eyes’. The poet elaborates on the phrase ‘shrewd eyes’ by stating in the last line that nothing escapes his grandfather’s observation: ‘Nothing escapes him’.
Despite himself, the grandfather’s eyes reveal to the poet his private dread about the future: ‘set the clock against the future’.
The grandfather wants to make sure the clock is set and doesn’t stop. He doesn’t want time to stop for himself.
This is a key moment in the poem as it would explain the grandfather’s determination to lead such an active life as has been portrayed in the poem. His busy routine may be based on the habits of a lifetime but they also serve to avert or postpone his decline. For all his shrewdness, the grandfather meets his match in his closely watching grandson.
The poet remains proud of his grandfather. He admits that for all his close observation of his grandfather, the man remains a mystery. The family cannot figure him out: ‘he escapes us all’.
There are nuance or hints of the death that awaits the aging grandfather in that last phrase. This is also hinted at in the second last line when the grandfather’s light goes out.
Thus Mahon composed the sonnet very cleverly. The words which describe the grandfather’s day-to-day life also imply the finality and inevitability of death.
Themes
The poet portrays his grandfather as a maverick or odd but independent character:
‘as cute as they come’ and ‘shrewd eyes’.
The poet shows that a retired person can continue to use their skills:
‘up at six with a block of wood or a box of nails’.
The poet portrays the various personality traits of his grandfather:
‘discretely up to no good’, ‘his shrewd eyes’, ‘cute’, ‘humorous’, ‘Nothing escapes him; he escapes us all’ etc.
The poet believes that childhood influences people as they get older:
‘the landscape of a childhood only he can recapture’.
and ‘like a four-year-old’
The poet reflects on old age and the foreseeable death of a loved one:
‘then his light goes out’.
Tones
Sometimes the tone is factual:
‘They brought him in on a stretcher’.
Sometimes the tone is humorous:
‘discretely up to no good’.
Sometimes the tone is approving:
‘but humorous’.
Sometimes there is a tone of childhood wonder:
‘his great boots thumping in the hall’.
Sometimes the tone is suspicious:
‘And in he comes, as cute as they come’.
sometimes the tone is proud:
‘Nothing escapes him’.
Sometimes the tone is dark or threatening:
‘then his light goes out’. This is factual but may point towards death.
Imagery
The images are mainly factual images the poet recalls concerning his grandfather. The poet also adds a few poetic images of his own.
There are four images of working at the shipyard:
‘Boiler-rooms, row upon row of gantries…on cold
Mornings he is up at six… his great boots…’
There are seven images of childhood:
‘the landscape of a childhood
Only he can recapture… with a block of wood
…discreetly up to no good
Or banging round the house like a four-year-old…
Never there when you call… as cute as they come. …he escapes us all.’
There are ten images of the grandfather’s personality:
‘Wounded but humorous…the landscape of a childhood
Only he can recapture. … discreetly up to no good
Or banging round the house like a four-year-old…
Never there when you call. But after dark
You hear thumping in the hall
And in he comes, as cute as they come…
His shrewd eyes … then his light goes out.
Nothing escapes him; he escapes us all.’
There are four poetic images:
‘…. from the world…’ This is an abstract term for life outside the house.
… landscape of a childhood’. This is a metaphor for childhood memories.
‘… set the clock
Against the future…’. This is an insight into the grandfather’s inner fears.
‘Nothing escapes him; he escapes us all’. This is a carefully balanced and brief slogan or axiom [saying] for the grandfather’s character.
Sound effects
Alliteration [the repetition of first letters]:
‘Boiler-rooms, row upon row of gantries rolled
Away to reveal …recapture’
The ‘r’ sound here shows alliteration. This alliteration cleverly interlinks the two parts of the grandfather’s past: his work and his childhood. This is reinforced by assonance and internal rhyming, as explained below.
Assonance [repetition of vowels]:
Note the ‘u' and ‘o’ sounds in
‘Wounded but humorous; and he soon recovered.
Boiler-rooms, row upon row of gantries rolled…’
These sounds are revealing. The ‘u’ sound makes the facial expression to go with pain; the ‘o’ sound coincides with the wonder experienced when recalling the impressive scene of the shipyard.
Can you spot the sharp ‘e’ sounds in ‘Never there when…’? What does this assonance emphasise? The cross tone of someone calling an errant child?
Rhyming:
There is an irregular rhyming pattern, not the normal tidy sonnet rhyme scheme. Pronunciation, rather than the exact letters, influences the rhyming. Note in the following analysis that the second line ends on a different spelling compared to any other line in the poem: ‘ered’. But it is possible to pronounce ‘ered’ in the word ‘recovered’ as ‘ood’.
In the octave [the first eight lines] the end words rhyme in the pattern abababba.
In the sestet [the final six lines] the pattern is cdeced
The end sounds of the sonnet are as follows:
‘orld’, ‘ered’, ‘oled’, ‘ood’, ‘old’, ‘ood’, ‘ood’, ‘old’.
The slight irregularities suit the subject of the poem, as the grandfather seems to have been something of a maverick or strange character.
Internal Rhyme [rhyming inside one line]:
Note the ‘ro’ sound repeated four times in the third line:
‘Boiler-rooms, row upon row of gantries rolled’
Can you find any more examples in the poem?
Note other long-distance rhyming in the poem such as ‘landscape’ in line four and the internally rhyming ‘escape’ of the last line. The cleverness of this rhyming lies in the fact that the ‘landscape of a childhood’ is the grandfather’s ‘escape’ from the sense of reality of those around him. Childhood memory is also a landscape in which he can live in denial of the aging process.
Rhythm:
The rhythm is partly defined by the strict sonnet form, but Mahon gives it a natural feeling with his run on lines and simple everyday words. The poem feels like an anecdote, a spoken story, naturally addressed to the reader.
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