A poem - 29 May 2005

[Mephisto2]

I used to post some of my favourite poems here regulary; both for comment, discussion and enlightenment. I haven't done so in quite some time, but shall try to do so once more.

Here's one of my favourites, not least because it is by Ireland's only living Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heany.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as 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 could 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, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, 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.

This poem reminds me of home, of my youth spent in the west of Ireland, of watching old men, clothed in ill-fitting tweed with flat caps and large, saucer sized hardened hands, hefting clods of earch, of turf, the cold air wheezing out of their lungs like cigarette smoke.

I love the way it touches on three generations; his father digging potatoes at home, his grandfather digging turf and he, the poet himself, digging... digging for words, foir meaning, for something, with his tool... his spade... his pen...

I guess this poem may not mean much to many on this board. But I decided to share it. Poetry is a great medium and I lament its waning...


Mr Mephisto

[amonkie]

I enjoyed reading this - it makes you wonder if the father being watched by his son did the same with his father, or if they each started alone, to look up and notice the one ahead had found their own source to dig. We each travel a different path, thus we experience difference. Yet there is a sense of community in the journey.