here<\/a>. But the poem pretty much tells the whole story. I’ll just repeat what I said before: for me, the entirety of Seamus Heaney’s power and magic as a poet is in the last line of that poem. It’s simply breathtaking.)<\/p>\nAnd lastly, I am going to post his poem “Digging”. It is one of his earlier efforts, but he refers to it often as the moment he really became a poet. It is a poem I have gone to often in the last couple of years, as I have struggled with the drudgery of my manuscript, or the work I need to do to get the damn thing done.<\/p>\n
The subject of the poem is a cliche: Son will choose a different path from father – perhaps this choice will not be understood – but son knows he must go his own way. You can feel how young he is in the poem.<\/p>\n
But oh, what a lovely and moving<\/i> poem it is. Yes, Mr. Heaney, you do dig with your pen. You do. And for that I am very grateful.<\/p>\n
\nDigging<\/b><\/p>\n
Between my finger and my thumb
\nThe squat pen rests; snug as a gun.<\/p>\n
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
\nWhen the spade sinks into gravelly ground.
\nMy father, digging. I look down<\/p>\n
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
\nBends low, comes up twenty years away
\nStooping in rhythm through potato drills
\nWhere he was digging.<\/p>\n
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
\nAgainst the inside knee was levered firmly.
\nHe rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
\nTo scatter new potatoes that we picked
\nLoving their cool hardness in our hands.<\/p>\n
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
\nJust like his old man.<\/p>\n
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
\nThan any other man on Toner’s bog.
\nOnce I carried him milk in a bottle
\nCorked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
\nTo drink it, then fell to right away<\/p>\n
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
\nOver his shoulder, going down and down
\nFor the good turf. Digging.<\/p>\n
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
\nOf soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
\nThrough living roots awaken in my head.
\nBut I’ve no spade to follow men like them.<\/p>\n
Between my finger and my thumb
\nThe squat pen rests.
\nI’ll dig with it.<\/p>\n
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