We are prepared: we build our houses squat,
Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.
The poem opens on a note of calm, assertive confidence. The statement "we are prepared" introduces readers to the first-person plural speaker, signaling the unity and strength of the island's community. That opening phrase, with its baldly declarative syntax, gives way to a colon. The colon brings the sentence to more of a rest than a comma would, allowing that confident opening statement to feel complete and whole as is. At the same time, it signals that a list of evidence is coming, which will bring the reader even more reasons to believe that the islanders truly are prepared. Despite the overall confidence of tone in these opening lines, they foreshadow the danger of the storm and, perhaps more darkly, let readers know that the island residents live in a state of constant fear, necessitating preparedness at all times.
So that you listen to the thing you fear
Forgetting that it pummels your house too.
The island, the speaker assures us, doesn't have trees or any other natural structures that could be ruined, blown about, or generally disrupted by a storm. If it did, the speaker muses here, that external disruption might actually create some comfort or distraction, helping to turn the storm into entertainment so that it feels less like a direct threat to the islanders. These lines are especially rich when read as part of a political commentary on violence in Ireland. They suggest that, in a time of conflict, it can actually be a source of comfort or entertainment to watch things fall apart externally—in fact, the theatrics of conflict can make the toll of the conflict seem less close and less frightening. However, as the speaker reminds us, the island has no trees, and nothing to distract the islanders. If we understand the island to symbolize Ireland, perhaps this means that Ireland had too little power and too few institutions to provide a distraction or channel for conflict; instead, Heaney suggests, the cost of conflict falls on everyday individuals.
We are bombarded with the empty air.
Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.
In terms of content, tone, and sound, the end of the poem is a far cry from its beginning. The opening lines of "Island in the Storm" were made up of declarative, efficient statements focused on concrete facts. The speaker's tone was confident, and their diction was simple, full of one-syllable words and hard consonants. The words in these final two lines are longer on average, with softer sounds: the "th" of nothing, the open vowels of "air." The meanings of the words, too, are more nebulous and abstract, focused on concepts rather than the rocks and walls of the opening lines. Meanwhile, the speaker is no longer terse and sure. They have become reflective, embracing abstraction, paradox, and uncertainty. It feels almost as if the helplessness brought on by the crisis of the actual storm has given the speaker a chance to relax and think, whereas the stress and rush of constant preparation rendered thought impossible.
