8/10/2019 Nature - Heaney -

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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!y father, digging. " look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away#tooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

$gainst the inside knee was levered firmly.

%e rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge

deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,&oving their cool hardness in our hands.

By 'od, the old man could handle a spade.

(ust like his old man.

!y grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner)s bog.

*nce " carried him milk in a bottle

+orked sloppily with paper. %e straightened

upTo drink it, then fell to right away

 icking and slicing neatly, heaving sods*ver his shoulder, going down and down

-or the good turf. igging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch

and slap

*f soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But ")ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

")ll dig with it.

S. Heaney

Requiem for the Croppies

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...

 o kitchens on the run, no striking camp...

We moved quick and sudden in our own

country.

The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.$ people hardly marching... on the hike...

We found new tactics happening each day

We)d cut through reins and rider with the pike

$nd stampede cattle into infantry,Then retreat through hedges where cavalry

must be thrown.

Until... on /inegar %ill... the final conclave.

Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at

cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken

wave.

They buried us without shroud or coffin$nd in $ugust... the barley grew up out of our

grave.

S. Heaney

8/10/2019 Nature - Heaney -

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Bogland

We have no prairies

To slice a big sun at evening00

1verywhere the eye concedes to

1ncrouching hori2on,

"s wooed into the cyclops) eye

*f a tarn. *ur unfenced country

"s bog that keeps crusting

Between the sights of the sun.

They)ve taken the skeleton

*f the 'reat "rish 1lk 

*ut of the peat, set it up

$n astounding crate full of air.

Butter sunk under 

!ore than a hundred yearsWas recovered salty and white.

The ground itself is kind, black butter 

!elting and opening underfoot,

!issing its last definition

By millions of years.

They)ll never dig coal here,

*nly the waterlogged trunks

*f great firs, soft as pulp.*ur pioneers keep striking

"nwards and downwards,

1very layer they strip

#eems camped on before.

The bogholes might be $tlantic seepage.

The wet centre is bottomless.

S.Heaney