By Seamus Heaney
Understanding poems for the weak students: word by word
Paraphrase of the poem in simple language:
We are confident and prepared to fight the storm by building our houses heavily.
Our walls made of rock are sunk in the wall and the roof are made of smooth flat plates.
The shrunken/unfriendly earth has never troubled us (the strom is really unfriendly and has caused huge troubled)……
Simplfied meaning of the words in the poem:
Squat: heavily built/solid/low to the ground
Slate: green, or bluish-purple malapropic rock easily split into flat plates
Wizened: wrinkled/shrunken/unfriendly/worn/withered/barren
Hay: dried grass
Stack: a pile of corn
Stook: a group of bundles of grain stood on end in a field
Company: friend
Chorus: a part of a song which is repeated after each verse
Gale: storm/tornedo
Pummel: strike repeatedly with the fists
Exploding: blowing up/banging
Fling: thrown/hurled
Spray: shower/sprinkle/foam
Savage: ferocious/wild/brutal/demon
Dive: plunge head first into water with one’s arms raised over one’s head/jump
Strafe = bombs with artillery shells
Salvo = simultaneous firing of artillery
Paraphrase of the poem in simple language:
We are confident and prepared to fight the storm by building our houses heavily.
Our walls made of rock are sunk in the wall and the roof are made of smooth flat plates.
The shrunken/unfriendly earth has never troubled us (the strom is really unfriendly and has caused huge troubled)
With dried grass, so as you see, there are no pile of corn
Or no bundles of grain that can be lost (because storm has made our lives so hard). Nor are there trees
Which might prove friend when it blows full
Blast (so it is not friend or company in real context): you know what I mean – leaves and branches
Can raise a tragic song collectively in a storm (due to the destruction of the storm)
So that you listen to the thing you fear
Forgetting that it repeatedly hits or strike your house too.
But there are no trees, no natural shelter.
You might think that the sea is a friend (it looks like friend but it is not; it is an enemy)
Blowing up/destroying our houses happily down to the cliffs,
But no: when it begins, the thrown foam hits the very windows, ejecting forcible saliva
(it looks like someone throws poisonous saliva) like controlled cat
Changed to uncontrolled and brutal. We just wait with patience taking no action when wind blow stormily
And it acts like non-stopping bombs with artillery shells without any trace. Space is the storehouse of simultaneous artillery though it looks like empty.
Strange, it is a huge empty space that we are afraid of (though this is not empty as it is full bombs)