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

From Cork With Love - by Paul O'Mahony · Nov 3, 2025 · 12m

You hear Seamus Heaney reading his poem "Digging" three times. You hear Paul O'Mahony reading the poem twice.

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…