Two Lorries

The title of the poem, “Two Lorries,” indicates that the work is going to be a study in parallel and contrast. The first stanza is important in this sestina form because, line by line, it establishes the six repeating words that will form the core ideas of this piece: “ashes” (Line 1), “lorry” (Line 2), “coalman” (Line 3), “mother” (Line 4), Magherafelt (Line 5), and “load” (Line 6). The opening is rooted in down-to-earth realism, using sharp imagery to bring it to life. The “rain… on black coal” (Line 1) and the “tyre-marks in the yard” (Lines 2) immerse the reader in a photographic memory. There is a sense of innocence here too, not just in the speaker of the poem but in the world around him: “Would she ever go to a film in Magherafelt?” (Line 5) is such a simple question, yet so distinctive of a time before the fear and pain that the coming political turmoil would bring.

The boy loses interest in the conversation and turns his attention to the coal, viewing it in juxtaposition: “Silk-black” (Line 8) and “silkiest white” (Lines 9). In this instance, though they work in contrast, they both represent something positive—the quality of the coal the man brought them. As the speaker turns to the adults again, he sees his mother warming to the coalman’s attention. The boy resents his arrogance and big-city Belfast accent, offering his mother unheard-of decadence. His mother returns to the kitchen, getting her “black lead / And emery paper” (Lines 14-15). Blacklead cleaner and emery paper were commonly used in the 1940s as stovetop cleaners; however, one can read a double meaning here with emery boards and kohl pencils used as cosmetics. The ambiguity allows the reader to wonder: Does she join the coalman in his truck? Or does she wipe the ashes from her face and watch him drive away?

The speaker dreams of the time his mother could have enjoyed the company of a smooth-talking Belfast man in a red velvet cinema seat; both his mother and the coal man have passed on by this time. The childhood memory triggers another memory of a truck just like the coalman’s, this time carrying bombs instead of coal. Though neither the speaker nor his mother were there at the time of bombing, he imagines her ghost there at the exploded bus station, waiting for him. Here, more old memories blend together; meeting his mother, her arms filled with shopping bags “full up with shoveled ashes” (Line 27) and the horrors of the explosion. He imagines death with the face of the coalman, coming to collect her a second time in a second truck. Where the earlier memory had him emptying his sacs along the way as he made his deliveries, here he is filling them up with the bodies and ashes of the dead.

As his memories tangle together in the final stanzas, the speaker wonders which lorry he is seeing in his mind’s eye. In the end, it does not matter, because in this moment they are one and the same. The mixing of these two moments in the speaker’s history marks the end of a time when Magherafelt represented an enjoyable and familiar part of life in his childhood, remembered as a cinema date between adults, or the familiar spot where a boy finds his mother after a day of shopping. The deadly explosion of the second lorry forever alters the image of Magherafelt for the author and Ireland, turning it into a battlefield with civilian casualties. These two times also mark a division between his childhood, a time when his mother was still alive, and the speaker’s adulthood, where she is gone and he is fully aware of the explosive violence of the Troubles in the second half of the 20th century. The slow burn of the high-quality coal delivered by the coal man is likewise contrasted by the quick and powerful explosion of the second lorry, though their ashes are the same “silk-white” (Lines 9, 39).

The poem closes with the narrator speaking directly to the coalman for the first time, who is also Death. He tells him to continue with his dark and deadly work, but then to find his mother and make her happy as he could not the first time. He describes the coalman as “filmed in silk-white ashes” (Line 39), and the word “film” brings back to mind the cinema date from his childhood memory. This leaves us with a final impression of the poet’s mother enjoying her day beside the other man at last.