Immersed in verse

Current mood: Word-playful
Current music: The music of poetry

Guess what? On Monday I went to the kick-off for Hong Kong's International Literary Festival 2006 - a poetry reading by Seamus Heaney, the famous Irish poet who won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, and is hailed by some as the "world's greatest living poet". It was an excellent session, where Mr Heaney interspersed the reading of his poems with their background and inspiration. I was amused by the fact that the first of the poems he recited was the very first of his I'd ever read: 'Digging', which was published in 'Death of a Naturalist' in 1966 (he was 27!).

In the poem, he compares himself with his forefathers. As rural folk, his father and his grandfather both worked with a spade, digging for food and fuel. In contrast, he wields a pen; instead of digging into the soil, he digs into his past, and works with that.

I suppose you'll want to read it now...

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Digging
(1966)

By Seamus Heaney, from 'Death of a Naturalist'

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as 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 could 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, digging 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.

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How'd you like that? Anyway, after an hour of listening to poetic words swooshing over my head, I was feeling pretty inspired myself, and came up with a poem on my way home. It's not going to look too good next to Mr Heaney's poem, but you'll have to forgive the fact that I'm not a Nobel laureate. Yet... (Fingers crossed!)

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Waiting
(2006)

By Aureala

In the hazy grey of evening,
Awash with spectres of my past,
I stood at the bus-stop –
Waiting for the No. 8
Waiting to be saved.

Another bus stopped across the way
And in it, a man – dead!
His eyes, open wide,
Gazing towards infinity;
His face, glistening palely
Under neon lights;
His body, reclining in its leather seat,
A mere waxwork.
A lifeless effigy, a caricature of existence –
But still beautiful in death.

No, no – not dead! Reason declared,
And Sentiment desperately agreed:
He is merely in repose;
His eyes are glazed as he daydreams
Of the girl he is soon to meet,
Or simply muses about a hot meal and a soft bed
To sleep off the worries of a long day.

Thus my eyes and mind did disagree,
Till presently the bus pulled out
Going the way down which I'd come
And taking the ghostly man with it.

In the hazy grey of evening,
Awash with spectres of my past,
I stood at the bus-stop –
Praying for the No. 8
Praying to be saved.

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Well, that was today's literary contribution. Feel free to write your own!