#203: “Digging”

I sat all day at the poker table, riffling chips, folding hands until the close. At two o’clock I went on twitter.

A favourite here, a retweet there, I scanned my feed, clicking on links, offering consolation ULs and GGs to my fallen comrades. And then I saw it: “Poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney dies aged 74.” I scrolled back to the top and refreshed the feed. Two more news outlets confirmed the grim news.

As somebody who generally balks at sentimentality, it is always a curious feeling when something hits me this deeply. There I was, sitting at a poker table in the Hotel Arts in Barcelona, a room mostly filled with strangers and all I wanted to do was talk to somebody, somebody Irish, about the great man. I wanted to tell somebody about ‘Digging’ and the inspirational effect it ironically had on me when I was starting off in poker. I wanted to tell somebody about how my rather solemn party-piece as a child was to recite from memory ‘Mid-Term Break’ for my father’s friends, I assume because no traditional Irish sing-song would be complete without making an 8 year old do a poem about a dead baby.

But then, as I continued thumbing up and down twitter, I noticed a tweet from Sam Grafton paying tribute to Mr. Heaney and I realised immediately that this was a great loss not just for Ireland but for the entire world. He was, after all, the Poet in Residence in Harvard, the Professor of Poetry at Oxford, a Nobel Prize winner, a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres and the recipient of a dozen international awards. This was a man who touched all who loved the written word. Seamus Heaney Street is not in Belfast or Dublin. It is in Ostermarie, Denmark.

Several hours later, still surfing the net aimlessly between hands, I came across a beautiful piece in the Paris Review by my extraordinarily talented former college classmate Belinda McKeon who put better and more lovely words to what I and so many other friends, colleagues and fans were feeling.

Between the poker player’s finger and thumb
The cards rest.
We dig with them.