A news report says that the Irish bard, Seamus Heaney, died today. It’s hard to believe poets ever die. I think there’s something immortal about this type of human. But we’ve all got feet made of clay, and die we all do eventually, although I still think of death as a bad idea all around. Or, maybe I’m just in agreement with Woody Allen, who once remarked that he isn’t afraid of dying, he just doesn’t want to be there for his own. So here’s one of many by Heaney, famous for much more than this humble piece. I love it because he comes from a history dug out of the earth with a spade, but he created a new history digging through time with a pen.
If you go the Poetry Foundation’s site at this link, you can hear the poet himself read “Digging”.
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.