Digging

• Poet


  Seamus Heaney
• Stanza 1

  Between my finger and my thumb

  The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
• Stanza 2

  Under my window, a clean rasping sound

  When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

  My father, digging. I look down
• Stanza 3


  Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

  Bends low, comes up twenty years away

  Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

  Where he was digging.
• Stanza 4

  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.
• Stanza 5


  By God, the old man could handle a spade.

  Just like his old man.
• Stanza 6


  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.
• Stanza 7

  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.
• Stanza 8

  Between my finger and my thumb

  The squat pen rests. I'll dig with it
• Who's getting distinction in English

  Me obviously