The collection has three parts. The first part consists of 25 lyric poems. While the lyrics cover a range of topics several allude to the larger theme of the collection as a whole: the question of what responsibility the poet has to bear witness to and address historical and political issues. In "Away from it All" Heaney quotes from Czeslaw Milosz's "Native Realm" in which he writes, "I was stretched between contemplation / of a motionless point / and the command to participate / actively in history." The tug between these two poles, aesthetics and history, is further taken up in "Chekhov on Sakhalin," Heaney's poetic rendering of Anton Chekhov's visit to the penal colony on Sakhalin Island in 1890 to observe and write about the condition of the prisoners.