I first learned of Seamus Heaney in middle school. We were assigned his translation of Beowulf. The book didn’t stay with me, his name did. Is it Hay-neigh, or is it Hee-knee, or is it a mix, maybe Hay-knee or alternatively Hee-neigh? It wouldn’t be until high school that I learned he was more than Beowulf‘s translator, that he was a poet too. In fact, mainly a poet. My English teacher adored him. His grandparents, or was it his great-grandparents, had immigrated from Ireland. He told us that his dad used to send money to the IRA from the US. Ergo, his affinity for Heaney was determined by fate. Because I really liked this teacher, I also liked Heaney. It’s strange how the reasons behind some of our deepest attachments aren’t all that deep.
Anyways, my superficial appreciation had the happy consequence of directing me to some absolutely lovely artifacts of human language. Below I’ve included one of my favorite poems of his, titled “Digging.”
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.
The poem reminds me of my dad’s family. My great-great-grandfather devoted his hands to the callous-generating tools of agriculture. My great-grandfather devoted his to the rough handles of the worn saws they used to fell trees out West, at least until the time he achieved the rebellion that permanently altered the life trajectories of his children and his children’s children and onwards — defection from the farm to the schoolhouse. My grandfather devoted his hands to the fine tools of dentistry. My dad, like Heaney, traded these practical tools for the comfort of the pen tucked between finger and thumb. And I, for my part, have taken one further step, replacing the strokes of pens with the clacks of keys.
flaneurisms.blog 
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