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  • Digging
    By Seamus Heaney


    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.


    Source: Death of a Naturalist (1966)

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