Summary
The poem's speaker, in the first-person plural, announces that "we" are prepared—presumably for the upcoming storm in the title. They explain how they're prepared. For one thing, their houses are sturdily built. Their foundations are held down by rocks, and the roofs are made of slate. The land is not fertile, so the islanders don't have the luxury of hay. That's a good thing now: no haystacks mean one less thing that can be damaged in the storm. The speaker, or speakers, note another thing the island lacks: trees.
Analysis
Everything about this beginning emphasizes the islanders' sturdiness, toughness, and simplicity. They are, Heaney hints, a humble and practical group of people, well-suited to surviving hardship in spite of (or, more likely, because of) the fact that they don't have access to luxuries. It's not just the direct statements saying this, or even the description of a barren, rocky landscape. Rather, Heaney gets this impression across in his diction, meter, choice of speaker, and in the arrangement of the poem on the page. By going through these elements one at a time, we can get a better idea of how exactly Heaney goes about characterizing the island and its inhabitants. Let's start with the speaker. Just like the houses on the island are "squat"—wide, low, and unassuming—so, too, is this poem's first-person plural speaker. Rather than focusing on a single notable speaker, Heaney distributes the weight of narration evenly to all the islanders, making his speaker less like a towering skyscraper and more like a low, sprawling house with its weight distributed across a foundation. The poem's "we," as opposed to an "I," gives the impression of a large and completely united front, against which a storm doesn't have a chance.
Then there's the matter of the poem's word choice, or diction. It's not only adjectives like "sturdy" that give the impression of toughness: it's the choice to use simple, short words like "rock," "stack," "squat," and "sink." Nearly every single word at this point in the poem is one syllable long, and not a single one stretches longer than two syllables. These words say something about the people who use them. We can see that they're not extravagant or showy people, and aren't trying to seem smart by using fancy vocabulary. They communicate the same way that they build their homes, aiming for something that works and that does what it's supposed to do, rather than something that looks or sounds pretty for its own sake. These short, practical words also use the same sounds over and over again, usually ending in K or T sounds. These hard consonants mimic the sturdiness of the people and places they describe. Even though some of these words start with a more sibilant, airy-sounding "S," they always return to these practical-sounding Ks and Ts.
The poem's meter is as steady and reliable as its speaker. It's entirely in iambic pentameter—that is, every line has ten syllables, with the stress on every second syllable (an iamb is a two-syllable segment with the stress on the second syllable, and pentameter means that there are five iambs in a line). This is the most common meter in English-language poetry, and it's also the closest to spoken English. That is to say, many English sentences happen to be spoken in iambic pentameter, or something close to it. As a result, the poem's meter contributes to the impression that these are salt-of-the-earth, un-fancy people. This may be poetry, but it doesn't sound overly poetic or musical. Heaney doesn't break out of his iambic pentameter a single time in these beginning lines, and barely does so in the poem as a whole, which yet again builds the case that these speakers are consistent, steady, and disciplined. We can almost imagine that the unceasing rhythm of the poem matches the rhythm of work as the speakers build their houses.
Finally, there's the poem's appearance on the page. Rather than being split into stanzas, it appears in a single, solid block, evoking the hardness of the speaker's attitude as well as visually evoking the shape of a lone island.
