Digging | Seamus Heaney | Tamil Summary | Global Literature | BA English | MS University

Digging
I hold a short pen between my fingers, where it fits tightly, like a gun.
Outside my window I hear the clear sound of a shovel working the pebbly earth. It's my father out there, digging.
Looking down, I see my father straining as he bends low to tend to the flowerbeds. When he comes back up, I think of him twenty years in the past, bending down in a steady rhythm to dig in the neat rows of potatoes.
His booted leg is placed sturdily and comfortably on the shovel, the shaft of which is secured against the inside of his knee.
He pulls potatoes up from the ground, and then digs deeply into the ground again. This time he's replanting all the potatoes that we'd help him pick. We loved feeling how hard and cool they felt in our hands.
My God, my old man was incredible with a shovel. So was his father.
No one could beat my grandfather when it came to cutting turf on the swampy land that he worked. I remember once bringing him milk in a bottle, which I'd sealed messily by using some crumpled up paper as a cork. He stood up straight and drank it all, and then got back to his work right away. He cut neat slices in the turf, throwing the heavy surplus earth over his shoulder, digging deeper and deeper to get to the best stuff.
I remember the chilly smell of the potato mould and the squishing sound of the wet earth. Those memories are still alive in my mind. Unlike my father and grandfather, though, my labor doesn't involve a shovel.
I hold a short pen between my fingers. It's my tool-this is what I'll dig with.
- Seamus Heaney

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