Digging Poem by Seamus Heaney

Digging

Rating: 3.9


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.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
iain Robb 14 March 2014

A classic piece of near line-broken prose rubbish, by a tin-eared old bore who will be forgotten just as soon as the next poet comes along willing to write odes to potatoes, and machines for cutting up turnips. Sadly, there's too many of those about, but hopefully our current editors will all be replaced someday by people with a sense for real poetry. In the meantime, let's just enjoy the utter inaptitude of an allusion between a spade and a pen.

11 83 Reply
Francie Lynch 05 September 2015

Poor baby. When you publish, pass the spade.

1 0
K Daly 21 September 2022

Nobel prize for literature,

0 0
Shouvik Roy 03 July 2012

the squat pen rest..

30 27 Reply
Reuven Goldfarb 13 May 2012

The main problem with this generally useful list is the frequent typographical errors that some people make when entering a poem. Mistakes in copying can be corrected by careful proofreading and comparing the original text (assuming that it's accurate) with the copy. I should think that the two errors in the second line would be obvious.

29 24 Reply
Rosa Jamali 01 October 2019

Seamous Heaney talks a lot about nature and Irish landscapes, in this poem we see a kind of farming range of vocabulary, the cold smell of potato mould and the stance the poet gives to pen here is amazing; it reminds me of the quote that " The Pen is Mightier than Sword" .

0 0 Reply
The Clown 15 May 2019

By the rivers of babylon, there we sat down Ye-eah we wept, when we remembered zion

2 0 Reply
ben dover 26 June 2018

lolololololololololololololol

2 0 Reply
yourak hunt 26 June 2018

jjjjjjfjfjfjfjfjjfjfjfjjfjfjfjfjjfjfjjf

2 0 Reply
Timothy Gowthorpe 17 November 2017

Smell, sniff as you read, I can smell it now and taste the milk straight from the cows teats, just as I did when I was a child. No raw milk now but turning a sod on a damp morning brings it alive every time.

3 4 Reply
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Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney

Castledàwson, County Londonderry
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