By Seamus Heaney

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.