Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; 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 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, going 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.
The squat pen rests; 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 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, going 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.
Seamus Heaney
2 comments:
What do you like about this poem? Particularly if you say one of the "best poems ever"?
I love the tension in this poem between Heaney's admiration for his father and grandfather and their profession as farmers and providers, and his admiration for poets and writers like himself. It's also a tension between his desire to be close to his family and their livelihood, and his desire to distance himself from them and farming through his occupation as a poet. While all the men in the three generations of Heaney's are digging, Seamus Heaney is not digging with a spade into the turf but digging with a pen into their history. Also, I love that this is a poem about poetry in the sense that he is digging with his pen through troves of knowledge and experience in order to unearth this poem that exists inside of him. Also, the poem just sounds great when you read it, both in your head and aloud, it has a musical sense that makes it seem to flow right off the page. It also has some great imagery within it involving his father and grandfather working, I love the line about "The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap/ of soggy peat" I feel like I can smell the dirt and the potatos, like I'm standing out in the field in the drizzling rain watching them labor. It is my favorite Heaney poem.
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