I Wish I'd Written This

Digging

By Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

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.

- from Death of a Naturalist (1966)

Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who died a week ago, was regarded as one of the greatest of contemporary poets. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995, and a number of other distinguished awards. He was also a playwright, a translator (notably of Beowulf) and an academic who taught at Queens University, Belfast, then later at Berkely, Harvard and Oxford.

His obituary in the BBC News says, in part:

He was a translator, broadcaster and prose writer of distinction, but his poetry was his most remarkable achievement, for its range, its consistent quality and its impact on readers: Love poems, epic poems, poems about memory and the past, poems about conflict and civil strife, poems about the natural world, poems addressed to friends, poems that found significance in the everyday or delighted in the possibilities of the English language.

Not only is he very famous, the particular piece I've chosen is one of his most famous poems. My apologies if I'm not surprising you with something new, but it's worth a re-read. I like what it suggests about making poems; also it exemplifies one of his favourite themes: the farming background he came from. (And, when I was a little girl, I was so fascinated to see a family friend — one of those honorary uncles — digging potatoes, and even more intrigued by his answer when I asked what he was digging, that he promptly nicknamed me Spud. A fond and abiding memory.)

Heaney was evidently an example of those great people who have true humility. Here is a wonderful account by a journalist who got to know him, revealing Heaney's down-to-earth personality (as well as his very Irish liking for a drink). Do read it all, and do watch the video too!

Of course he was prolific! You can find his books at Amazon and Amazon, UK.  You can read individual poems at PoemHunter and you can find videos by him and about him on YouTube.

P.S. Many of you, I know, follow Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads. If anyone missed it, I've just been made aware of a great tribute to Heaney there, including a must-watch (and even more, must-listen) video.

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).