Digging ...by Seamus Heaney

Another Heaney masterpiece - I think they put something in the water to make all Irish people love his work. He recently had his 70th birthday and one acid tongued newspaper reporter mentioned in an article that he got so much coverage that it seemed like everyone in the country had lived every minute of the 70 years with him! Anyway, this is a poem that reminds me of hearing stories from my parents about when they used to go turf cutting as children. It also reminds me that each generation has their own version of 'digging' - and it doesn't always have to be with the same implements.

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Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.