In Shadows

One can cast a shadow, one can be shadowed by another or one can be in shadow. In what sense are they perceptible objects or simply effects? Are shadows a passive absence of light or an active, threatening presence? Seamus Heaney’s poem 'Anything can happen', a 9/11 elegy from which 'Across a clear blue sky' takes its title, is the opposite of shadow. It has a statuary nature (its original title was ‘Horace and the Thunder’). It’s solid; its transitions and changes, its events and aftermaths all have the balance and integrity of the built. It is a kind of groundedness, indebted to the language and imagery of familiar myths, in which even the greatest calamity can be resolved in time.