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 gravely 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

                                        from Death of a Naturalist collection 1966

Perfect peace