The Sense of a Sensibility: On Being a Poet

'To be a poet  is a condition, not a profession.' ~ Robert Frost

I've been thinking a lot recently on what it means to be called a 'poet.' To be a writer and to be termed a writer is a very different thing from being a poet. Writers write, poets... wander lonely as clouds, through dales and daydreams (!) Poets pen poems of course, but to majority opinion, they exist in a state of bemusement, in a dreamy airy-fairyness. If you imagine a writer, it's a person sitting slavishly at a typewriter, surrounded by reams of pages; imagine a poet and it's a vague ambling figure, eyes to the sky, mind gallivanting betwixt the real and the imaginary. If a writer's profession is seen to be a strange one, then a poet's is far more surreal, and unsure in the eyes of many. 

The term 'poet' not only describes what you do, but more so, who you are. It's not just the act of writing poems that defines a poet, it's the general disposition that goes with that. The poetic disposition or sensibility, the enabler of poetry writing. There is truth in what Robert Frost said that to be a poet 'is a condition, not a profession'. I agree. It is more trait than talent, more a way of being than of writing. Most poets will tell you that to have a career writing poetry is almost impossible. But to be a poet, is reward in itself, for you are blessed with an unique way of seeing the world. 

'Poet' is really a word for a person who pays close attention to life. A life-observer. Note-taker.  Poets see things minutely, miraculously. We are attentive to every little detail, every nuance of emotion, every shift of light. To be a poet is to be continually aware of life - the emotions that eddy and swirl, the strata of the  physical, natural world down to the slightest movement of a leaf in a breeze. As Mary Oliver says in one of her poems: "Instructions for living a life: pay attention, be astonished, tell about it." And that's what poets do. To be a poet you work in the realm of astonishment, where every little thing is a wonder, a wonder that demands the right words to translate it to a wider audience. You have sensitive antennae that are always feeling out situations for poetic inspiration. I always think the mind of a poet is like a coral reef, alive with colour, opening and probing in an endless unfurling of brilliant blossom, vibrant with life. We have a kind of built'in periscope in the heart, to see not out of the deep, but into the deep.

  
I saw an advertisement for a writing job recently with one of the requirements asking for a 'high emotional intelligence.' Granted, all writers have this of course. How else could you write credibly about people without an innate understanding of the emotional psyche? But poets, well they excel in this realm. Look how precisely we can identify and analyse emotions, pin them like strange underwater specimens to our blank page and dissect them into fragments of many metaphors and similes, symbols and images. Our area of expertise is emotional terrain. We are more equipped there than anywhere else. It's not just a keen sensitivity (we feel - a lot), but we can dive into the depths of those feelings and emerge with a new knowledge, a newly gleaned wisdom  that is poetry's greatest attribute.  


And contrary to some popular opinion, we poets do not live in a grandiose world of our own making. As a poet, you are intrinsically attuned to the world as it is, not removed from it. We render it in language that shines a light on its silent secrets, illuminates and releases its burden of unnoticed glamours. Poetry is an expression of living, a testament of being here and feeling alive, a 'life-cherishing force' as Mary Oliver notes. And it is not the pursuit of the dreamy, or the airy-fairy, or a part-time past-time. It is a worthy discipline. I love how Mark Strand put it that: 'life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention.' In our finer moments, poetry is what we all do, what we all feel; that which quickens out heartbeat and bestows on us a true sense of being alive. Poets are just people who pledge their lives to this course, who take the time to record in verse (to seek, as Coleridge said 'the best words in the best order') the amazement of life they witness.  How can any of this be sometimes looked upon with smug derision by certain people? (Cynic, thy name is critic!)

Writers are concerned mostly with the search for truth in their writing. For poets, it's something else. Our holy grail goal is akin to Beauty, which is always to be found lilting over the horizon, stepping in and out of our wordings like a mirage goddess. To some people success is money, status, fame. To a writer, it is recreating Life in fiction; to a poet it is the skillful capturing of the Muse, the transformation of ordinary matter into the extraordinary. Poetry is a kind of alchemy, gilding precious gold the most commonplace of things. A poet  is blessed with a vision that sees the world as it innately is: a kind of Wonderland of experience and inspiration. 

How to spot a poet? Well maybe it's that person staring off into the distance with a glint in their eye, someone who takes an impish delight in their surroundings.  People who mutter words aloud - Yeats was often caught at this while out walking - no doubt the locals thought him mad, but my, how we of the poetic disposition would disagree! I often speak words aloud to hear their trill (and thrill.) To sound out how they fit together, how they sieve through air for a soft feather finish. As WH Auden says, 'a poet is first and foremost a person who is passionately in love with language,' but I beg to differ. A poet is first and foremost a person who is passionately in love with the world. As Wallace Stevens put it: 'a poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.' And it is this love that leads to ingenious feats of language craft. 

In a book I'm reading now by Irish author Niall Williams ('History of the Rain') I was struck by the lines on the first page about the personality of a poet: "My father bore a burden of impossible ambition. He wanted all things to be better then they were, beginning with himself and ending with this world. Maybe this was because he was a poet. Maybe all poets are doomed to disappointment. Maybe it comes from too much dazzlement." 

Dazzlement. Yes! The very thing. That's the occupational consequence of being a poet, being constantly dazzled.  And it can lead to a lot of things: gratitude, luminous verse, a magnificent sense of the joy of living. But also it can mean disappointment and disillusion and that distinctly Irish trait implied here of melancholy. 

I realise I'm lucky to be Irish and live in a country where poetry is respected so much. To be called a poet here is a term of endearment and respect. We have always celebrated poets in Ireland, right back to ancient times when a 'file' or bard, was one of the highest esteemed members of society. They were seen as a kind of magic practitioner (I love how Seamus Heaney echoed this when he said that he 'dabbled' in words), and were revered for their work. The file was the person who had a say in the running of society, one of its wise council, not to mention a mirth maker and almost soothsayer. The written word was held in the utmost regard, and still is. Today, poets enjoy a respectful presence in the land. Poetry competitions, readings and celebrations are rampant and our legacy of great poets such as Yeats and Heaney always something to be proud of despite other national problems. In a way our national character is infused with a sense of poetry, which manifests itself in wit and melancholy and a 'gift for the gab.' Our language is rain-soaked, dew-fed, a warm mixture of Gaelic and English, a cadence of mirth and woe, chiseled on the rhyme of sing-song greetings and the rhythm of jaunty dialects. 'We are all born with the gene of poetry', but I think this is particularly true of the Irish. And I'm glad to be an inheritor of that heritage. 

I've been thinking about this recently I suppose as I am becoming more aware of it all. How I pay attention to the world. How each day is a mass of colour amid a volley of words and bright bouquets of inspiration that manifest in the most ordinary of situations. Sometimes, there is sensory overload - too much to take in. The whole day shifts and shimmers as a wild rough draft and I struggle to lasso the neurotic subject  matter and pull it all into shape. 

I love that I see the world as a poet. As a place of plentiful inspiration. On good days, every little thing sings for notation: trees, skies, the petal of a flower, the memory of a song, the flutter of an eyelash, the wing of a bird, a smile, a word, a phrase, a food, a feather-light passing feeling. It is an exuberant, almost invincible feeling, a feeling that can trump every other negativity that crops up along the way. Instant heart highs. I have the power to shapeshift it all onto the page, and once there, some sense is made, but more than that, some significance, some semblance of worthy recognition emerges. Anything is worthy of poetry - as Flaubert said: 'There is not a particle of life that does not contain poetry within it'. And you find that to single out a subject for poetic incarnation is to enlarge the experience of it. To present it on a epic scale. And the result is that life accelerates into a momentum of mattering. It's almost a kind of superpower, really.

Being a poet may not be practical in today's world. It may not get you a 9 to 5 job or a moneyed up lifestyle. But it will make you rich with other gifts. Because of being a poet, having a poetic disposition, I find treasure everywhere I look; I can create my own riches. And I suppose I'm writing this post to acknowledge that fact, to express my heartfelt thanks for this 'condition' of being.  To accept it more fully. To understand it. To know my place in the grand scheme of work/life/career/vocation. And maybe mostly, to remember that there is something that I do that will always remain... hidden I suppose. Partly invisible.  But it is still there nonetheless. Pulsing quietly like a galaxy of stars. And it may not matter to some, but it matters to me. It may not be a way of proving my worth in the workplace or 'real' world (let's face it, in most jobs, poetic sensibility or 'high emotional intelligence' is not a required must), but is a way of proving my worth as an all-seeing, all-feeling human being, as a way of paying (awed) dues for my stay on this planet. I thank all my lucky stars that I have been bestowed with not just a knack at arranging words but this way of seeing, of being. This profound delight in taking note of living. I think this line sums up the feeling of a poet writing a poem most brilliantly: 

                                                       

 "And what I was feeling was the wonder, of being more than me. I had become a shining star, a burning nova. Exploding with love." 

~Walter Myers  

To put it simply, a kind of magic.

And a big-up salute to all you poets reading this! We may have it tough at times contending with practical pedanticness and cynical critics, but do remember, the goodness, the giddy gladness that accompanies our profession, and condition. 

~Siobhán

Sunday Morning Musing: In Love With Language

 'A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.' 

~  WH Auden

Agree! So in love with language that words stop and start you, that a phrase can stun you and keep you in reverie for days, that the learning and using of language is a privilege, a magic trick, that language is a kind of love, words stars in the blank page of existence. 

In keeping with Auden's point, below are the acclaimed 100 most beautiful words from the English language - to fall passionately in love with. Give or take a few (we all have our own personal favourites) I agree with the list. (But there are so many more that could be added!)

I definitely swoon over all those 'e' words anyway: 'ebullience,' 'effervescent' (actually sounds like it's bubbling doesn't it?!), 'ephemeral' (ahhh), 'evanescent'. (I'd add to those 'elusive'.) Oh and 'gossamer'! 'Halcyon'! 'Mellifluous' (sigh). Just look at those lovely 'l' words, lithe and languorous on the lips. Not to mention 'quintessential'. And the sparkle of 'serendipity'.  But why not end it with 'zenith' or 'zany'? Not to forget 'xylophone'! Ah so many words! I think there could be many more hundreds of words to add to this to make the ultimate list. Not to mention other languages. (French is one that every single word is a singsong delight.) 

Is your favourite word here? If not, do share - fling a word, a star of brightness, into the cyber void! I'd love to hear something ping in this silence of the blogosphere, in which I have many followers, but so few commentators.

Dedicated to all of us in love with language - poets, writers, logophiles, lovers, linguists, readers, raconteurs.

 

~ Siobhán

Seamus Heaney: Our Beloved File

 

'Earth receive an honoured guest...'

Ireland is in mourning. 

Our beloved national poet, our Nobel Laureate, our cherished file Seamus Heaney has died.  

But it's not just our country. No. The whole world knew and loved Seamus Heaney. Whether as a poet, a spokesman for Ireland, or just as an amiable public figure, a man of grace. Yesterday his picture graced the front page of the New York Times and countless other publications throughout the world.  Our own national newspapers have carried tribute upon tribute to this most unique man this weekend. From fellow writers and poets, but also - musicians, actors, politicians, heads of state, heads of church, heads of charities, hospitals, foreign presidents, schoolchildren and old people. Everyone, everywhere, loved him.

For Seamus Heaney was that most rarest of beings: a world-renowned Nobel prize winning poet, a man of letters, with countless awards and honours bestowed on him, but also a warm-hearted man, friendly, witty, down-to-earth (last time I checked all poets didn't pass this muster, the opposite infact). He was a poet's poet but also a poet of the people. His name is known in every Irish household, not just for his poetry, but for who he was, what he contributed to our national identity and spirit and how he did it. 

He not only showed us who we were in his verse, but who we could be. He celebrated us as a nation - our nature, our landscapes, our ordinary lives, our work, our fortitude, our friendliness, our humility, our spirit, our potential, our place in the world. He was a voice of goodness during the dark years of the Troubles, our voice of grace betwixt and between them, our voice on the international stage, our voice of dignity and gravitas.

One commentator noted that everyone in the country must have a Seamus story - from describing a meeting with him or just the influence of a poem of his. We all feel like we knew him, he was that kind of person. Contemporaries have all commented how approachable and helpful a figure he was - always encouraging new writers and never refusing a request for help from a fledgling writer or poet or keen observer or journalist or budding arts facilitator. Heaney was accommodating to everyone who came to his door (often literally), even students. (You have to chuckle at the 'homely' qualities attributed to him, one journalist talked of going to his house for an interview and being told that they would sit down and have a cup of tea and sandwiches first.) 

Ever so down-to-earth was this Nobel winner. The humble farmer's son never lost who he was or where he came from, no matter the amount of accolades or fame granted him.

He was a popular poet, a 'superstar' of a poet. He was by far the best-selling poet in the English language in the world. He brought poetry out of its roost on the higher realms of literature and into households all across the country. Another journalist wrote about going to a reading of his years ago in a school hall in the wilds of rural Ireland, being alerted to the location by a sign stuck in a tree labelled 'Seamus Heaney' with an arrow pointing to the school. People you wouldn't expect to know or like  poetry could be found at a Seamus Henaey reading - why? Because he was the voice of the country, the ambassador of our national spirit, in this case to upturn Shelley's words -  the acknowledged legislator of our world.

I admire Seamus Heaney as much as the next burgeoning writer. He was as good as it got - the master craftsman, the wondrous wordsmith, the ultimate figure to aspire to. My first experience of him -  as with almost everyone -  was studying his now infamous poem about the death of his young brother 'Mid-Term Break', in secondary school. It was a poem that appealed to many - with its raw tender account of Heaney's experience of being called home to the wake of his young brother, something that every Irish person can relate to, '...and big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow...and I was embarrassed/by old men standing up to shake my hand/and tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.' There is something so simple yet poignant in its telling, that when you come to the last line, the revealing of who died -  'a four foot box, a foot for every year' - you are touched most deeply. 

In my experience of teaching and tutoring - where poetry is always the most moaned-at component of English by grumbling indifferent teenagers - it was  Seamus Heaney who struck through the indifference. Because he was 'one of our own', students felt they could relate more to him. But it wasn't just that; heck if it was, every kid would love Yeats et al too!  More so because his poems were honest and real and spoke of ordinary things.  Because every student was aware of his celebrity-like status in the country and the awe and respect for him shown in every quarter, whether you were a poetry lover or not. Where there persisted a bland nonchalance to other poetry, Seamus Heaney's poetry was met with respect and automatically taken on board.  

I've much experience of marking student essays on poets and even though some achieve an A grade, you know as a teacher, and as a poetry lover, that most are learned off and very few genuine in their rendering of the effect the poetry had on them. But when Heaney was on the paper, it was one of the rare cases when you did see genuine admiration shine through. Not because he was Irish (lots of Irish poets on the syllabus - including current ones), but because I think, he was such an admirable person in Irish society and touched everyone through his person. He was our 'file' (the Irish for poet) in the oldest truest sense, the member of society who spoke for it, a wise and humble elder who we looked to for guidance, the keeper of the national spirit, dabbling in magic, and held in the highest regard by all its citizens. 

I was so lucky to attend a poetry reading of his just a few years ago. It was a free reading held in the National Gallery in Dublin and I remember being told by the receptionist to 'come early' because it would be 'packed.' Not usually two sentiments you associate with a poetry reading, ahem. Now, I've been to quite a few poetry readings and I can tell you this: they are always serious (sometimes stuffy) affairs. There's a literary snobbishness to poetry events that aficionados don't want to admit, but it is there. And then there's this stereotype that only older people like poetry and attend such events. Well, the Seamus Heaney reading blew these clichés out of the water. The crowd was an ordinary crowd and mostly, young people. Children. Teenagers. Twenty-somethings. As well as middle-aged couples. Grannies and Grandas.  OAPs. Equal gender ratio. All ages.

There was no pomp about the experience - Seamus Heaney shuffled onto the stage with a few tattered copies of his books, all dog-eared, with neon post-its sticking out and reading-glasses in hand. He bade hello to the audience and introduced himself with a half-humorous half-witty preamble he is famous for. He read his poems not as precious entities, but as soft stories, notes from a life lived and loved, as lessons and gifts he was lucky to have had bestowed on him. And in between every one he told a story about it, somehow settling the great mystique of the task of writing poetry into a more everyday occurence. 

But it didn't diminish the effect of the poems: when he read them, everyone listened. Actively. And were captured in the strange alchemy of the moment, a moment suspended from time, a lunchtime where we were all lifted, transported, from the practical routines of existing to the soul-stuff of living, the mattering. Every word was an incantation and testament to the power of the extraordinary in the ordinary. Everyone left the room changed. For a while afterwards, I felt like I was more aware of everything, more attentive to the world. That's what poetry does granted, but it takes a great poet to communicate it to everyone, so effectively and simply, and immediately.

Seamus Heaney brought poetry to the masses. Those who would normally tut and dismiss poetry would stand to attention for Heaney's verses. Through Heaney, they came to know a bit about the power of poetry, the power it has to define a people and instil in those people a sense of belonging, a sense of self, a sense of soul. 

In his Nobel acceptance speech, he spoke of crediting poetry for its "truth to life". He talked of the power of poetry as "the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitides and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being." He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 for 'works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.'

The poems themselves are exquisite creations: perfect in their verbal precision and heart-thumping in subtle meaning. And in Heaney's own words what a poem should be - 'compellingly wise'. I love reading them, but even better is listening to them read aloud for Heaney is highly-skilled at sound-effect (read aloud The Rain-Stick below). It's like the words dissolve on your tongue and from there are absorbed as a tonic into the body, a reinvigorating simultaneous fizzing of language and life. They click and clack together to make something solid and whole, as like the blacksmith's movements in The Forge, producing in the process 'the unpredictable fantail of sparks.' Heaney, in his Nobel acceptance speech, stated that good poems should be surprising and 'retune' the world: "like the impatient thump which unexpectedly restores the picture to the television set, or the electric shock which sets the fibrillating heart back to its proper rhythm." And that's what his poems do - restore and retune you, not just back to yourself, but to a better self.

The range of his poetry is wide: there are poems that vary from nature lyrics revelling in the beauty of the earth, especially his rural homeland of Co. Derry, to poems lit by reverent memory, poems dedicated to family members and friends, elegies to innocent people murdered in the Troubles, love poems to his wife Marie, poems influenced by classical literature, his extraordinary set of Bog people poems which explore the violence and killing in Northern Ireland in a metaphorical and symbolic language, poems that speak of the spirit's experience on earth, poems that are pure music to the ears, poems that have become forged by our political struggle and provide understanding and hope, like this excerpt from 'The Cure at Troy' immortalised by Bill Clinton in the Northern Ireland peace talks: 

'History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.'  

So many poems, so many people touched by them. He was most able - as a line goes in 'Postscript' - to 'catch the heart off guard and blow it open.' 

And now our hearts are hurting at the loss of our graceful and grand spokesperson. 

So many beautiful  tributes have been spoken over the last few days, from all over the world, and it's a measure of the man he was to see these kind glowing words in homage to him:

-Fellow Northern Irish poet Michael Longley consoles us with the thought that: "Just as his presence filled a room, his marvellous poems filled the hearts of generations of readers." -New upcoming Irish writer Belinda McKeon wrote a heartfelt piece about him expressing what we all are feeling:  "He was loved. Beloved. Whether he was met with as a name on a page, or as a voice from a podium, or as a cherished friend or fellow artist, Seamus Heaney moved into the lives of those who encountered him—those countless lives—and he made a difference that will matter forevermore." 
-Bill Clinton remarked that: "Both his stunning work and his life were a gift to the world. His mind, heart, and his uniquely Irish gift for language made him our finest poet of the rhythms of ordinary lives and a powerful voice for peace." 
-Irish Times journalist Fintan O'Toole commented that although we have lost a great man, we can never lose our great poet, who he describes as "an alchemist" - "He turned our disgrace into grace, our petty hatreds into epic generosity, our dull clichés into questioning eloquence, the leaden metal of brutal inevitability into the gold of pure possibility." Yes, his poetry will always be with us, those 'diamond absolutes' guiding the way.

-But I think Northern Irish actor Liam Neeson sums it up most perfectly when he said:  "With Seamus Heaney’s passing, Ireland, and Northern Ireland especially, has lost a part of its artistic soul. He crafted, through his poetry, who we are as a species and the living soil that we toiled in. By doing so, he defined our place in the universe. May he rest in peace." 

That's it exactly, we have lost a part of our artistic soul. The world of literature is in mourning. The country is in mourning. Many of us feel a personal loss and are in mourning. Not to mention Seamus' family who were so dear to him. There's a 'sunlit absence' now where Seamus Heaney would've been. 
 

Tomorrow he will be buried in his native Derry and the man who was a living embodiment of poetry, a  reverent man who inspired reverence worldwide, will be laid to rest, "a seeker of what is deepest in our common humanity" - the Archbishop of Dublin commented this evening.  Rest in peace file na hÉireann. We your people, and the world, salute you for your service to humanity. 

 

~ Siobhán

*I am posting Seamus Heaney poems all week on my blog Poem A Day, beginning today. 

 But for now, here are a few selections of my favourites. Feel free to share yours.

'Had I Not Been Awake'

Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof  
Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore

And got me up, the whole of me a-patter,  
Alive and ticking like an electric fence:  
Had I not been awake, I would have missed it,

It came and went so unexpectedly  
And almost it seemed dangerously,  
Returning like an animal to the house,

A courier blast that there and then  
Lapsed ordinary. But not ever  
After. And not now.

from Human Chain (2010)

The Rain-Stick

Up-end the stick and what happens next

Is a music that you never would have known

To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash

Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe

Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales

Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes

A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;

The glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.

Up-end the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,

Twice, ten, and thousand times before.

Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?

You are like a rich man entering heaven

Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again. 

from The Spirit Level (1996)


Postscript

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

from The Spirit Level (1996) 
 

Exposure

It is December in Wicklow:
Alders dripping, birches
Inheriting the last light,
The ash tree cold to look at.

A comet that was lost
Should be visible at sunset,
Those million tons of light
Like a glimmer of haws and rose-hips,

And I sometimes see a falling star.
If I could come on meteorite!
Instead I walk through damp leaves,
Husks, the spent flukes of autumn,

Imagining a hero
On some muddy compound,
His gift like a slingstone
Whirled for the desperate.

How did I end up like this?
I often think of my friends'
Beautiful prismatic counselling
And the anvil brains of some who hate me

As I sit weighing and weighing
My responsible tristia.
For what? For the ear? For the people?
For what is said behind-backs?

Rain comes down through the alders,
Its low conductive voices
Mutter about let-downs and erosions
And yet each drop recalls

The diamond absolutes.
I am neither internee nor informer;
An inner émigre, grown long-haired
And thoughtful; a wood-kerne

Escaped from the massacre,
Taking protective colouring
From bole and bark, feeling
Every wind that blows;

Who, blowing up these sparks
For their meagre heat, have missed
The once-in-a-lifetime portent,
The comet's pulsing rose. 

from North (1975) 


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.

from Death of a Naturalist (1966)