Had I not been awake
Had I not been awake - meaning Summary
Alert to the Ordinary
This short poem records a sudden waking in the night as wind shakes the house and fills the speaker with alert energy. The event is ordinary in itself, but Heaney presents it as a brief visitation that feels almost dangerous and then stays memorable. The poem suggests that intense moments of perception can briefly lift daily life into something vivid, then linger in memory long after they have passed.
Read Complete AnalysesHad I not been awake I would have missed it, A wind that rose and whirled until the roof Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore And got me up, the whole of me a-patter, Alive and ticking like an electric fence: Had I not been awake I would have missed it, It came and went so unexpectedly And almost it seemed dangerously, Returning like an animal to the house, A courier blast that there and then Lapsed ordinary. But not ever After. And not now.
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