The Example of Seamus Heaney

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.

One thing that baffles me, as someone from outside Ireland, is the political meaning ascribed to Heaney’s move in the mid 1970s from Belfast to Dublin when he took up an academic position there. I’ve seen several people suggest that that move in and of itself meant that Heaney was “taking a side” in the Troubles. The poet himself never made any overt statement to the fact, and yet we’re told the move itself spoke volumes.

i have believed for some time now that this site is kind of like the hats in Westworld - a way of reading tech peoples thoughts so that the site's VC owner can use them in some nefarious way.

Anyhow, I'm coming in here to say that this is a nice little article about an Irish poet. However, by adding this comment, how will my contribution be interpreted by the algorithm. Will I be targeted in some way?

How does his work compare for example with that of John Betjeman?

In this comment thread there are some lovely reflections on human nature, how it manifests in technology development, etc. I had a thought recently, and this might be a place to share it that others might enjoy.

Pair programming is like nuclear fusion. There is the force of electromagnetism that causes nuclei to repel each other. Natural social awkwardness, fragile egos, conflict aversion and other similar issues cause programmers to resist pairing. Under the right conditions of heat and pressure the electro-magnetic force can be overcome, nuclei get close enough to each other, the strong nuclear force takes over, and the nuclei fuse. For programmers, when pairing starts to work well, a sort of flow state can emerge involving multiple people. Ideas start to spark back and forth, idea ignition happens, and somehow the collaboration goes to a new place that would have been entirely inaccessible to each person individually.