16 pages • 32 minutes read
Seamus HeaneyTwo Lorries
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Embracing the Present
The dual timelines of this piece effectively show us the impermanence of time, and how important it is to make the most of each moment. Opening with a childhood snapshot of a moment in time, we see how the young coalman Agnew propositions the poet’s mother to go see a film with him in the city. Though tempted by “the tasty ways of a leather-aproned coalman” (Line 12), she eventually returns to her kitchen, cleaning the stove and attending to the usual business of the day-to-day running of a home. The coalman drives away, and the speaker is left to wonder at what might have been.
Years later, the mother has passed away and the speaker imagines the destruction of the bomb explosion in Magherafelt. He speaks of time fast forwarding into the future, as it so often does as one ages, and then of countless lives cut short: “Refolding body-bags […] / Empty upon empty” (Lines 29-30). It is only in death, only after their time has already run out, that the poet’s mother and Agnew the coalman get their happy ending at last. Through these parallel stories, the reader learns how precarious time can be; the poem encourages the reader to embrace the time one has and live it to its fullest.
Death and Grief
Death and loss are major themes in this poem, as it visits a horrible, senseless crime that claimed human lives in the explosion. The reader sees Death personified with the face of Agnew the coalman, loading up his truck not with coal or empty coal sacks, but with the bodies of the fallen. The repeating mentions of dust, ashes, and darkness support this theme of death, destruction, and the silence that comes after it.
This poem may also be taken as a eulogy to the poet’s mother, seen most vividly in the opening stanzas. The reader understands from the fifth stanza that by the time they leave the childhood memory behind, the speaker’s mother has passed on: “A revenant on the bench where I would meet her” (Line 25). There is a sense of loss for this figure, but also one of gratitude that she is no longer there to live through the destruction and pain of the bomb explosion. As the poem closes, we see the speaker’s wish for her: that she finally gets her happy ending with the handsome man in a life beyond this one.
Loss of Innocence
Following the theme of grieving and loss, the poet loses hold of his innocence throughout the two time periods. As a child, he listens to the coalman flirt with his mother and ask her on a date. There is little indication of how old the child is at this time; the reader is left to wonder: how much of the interaction does he understand? What does he know of the city man’s true intentions with a beautiful young mother? The speaker has a strong sense of protectiveness for the woman: “With his Belfast accent’s sweet-talking my mother” (Line 4), “And films no less! The conceit of a coalman” (Line 13). There is no mention of a father, so the poem suggests that the boy may feel responsible for his mother, taking on a role that he should not yet need to.
As time moves forward into the Magherafelt bombing, the speaker reflects on the bus station where he used to meet his mother, her arms full of shopping bags. Though we have no sense of when these memories take place in between the two snapshots, there is a sense of happiness displaced by chaos, of a simpler time blasted away by the destruction of the attack. Once again, something pure is being taken away by the harsh realities of the world.
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By Seamus Heaney
