#Napodpomo 3/30. READING POETRY: “Digging” - Seamus Heaney

You hear Seamus Heaney reading his poem "Digging" three times.  You hear Paul O'Mahony reading the poem twice. DiggingBetween 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 downTill 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 deepTo 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 dayThan any other man on Toner’s bog.Once I carried him milk in a bottleCorked sloppily with paper. He straightened upTo drink it, then fell to right awayNicking and slicing neatly, heaving sodsOver his shoulder, going down and downFor the good turf. Digging.The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slapOf soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edgeThrough living roots awaken in my head.But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.Between my finger and my thumbThe squat pen rests.I’ll dig with it.