Adventure

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.



Before St. Patrick's Day, I like to remember the many great Irish writers who have changed history. "Digging," seeing into dark corners previously unexplored: Alice McDermott, James Joyce, William Trevor. The poem above comes from Seamus Heaney.


Heaney's grandfather was a farmer; he "cut turf." (God is in the details, and it doesn't matter that we don't know what "Toner's bog" is; the name adds an aura of authority.)

We might not have words to dramatize the process of farming, but Heaney is unusual, and Heaney has the words: "nicking and slicing," "heaving sod," "going down and down for the good turf." Heaney the poet imagines himself into Grandpa's consciousness; transported, Heaney feels "the curt cuts of an edge through living roots.....awakening" in his head.

Then, a twist: Heaney isn't a farmer, but he does his own tough work, cutting and slapping and nicking, with a pen. (A sense of ambivalence runs throughout; the pen fits "snug like a gun" in a writer's hand.)

Work can seem mindless and dull--but leave it to Heaney to lend a sense of glamor to whatever you're doing today. I very much like this wondrous and well-known poem.