H is for Heart-lifting...and Heaney

Heaney, Seamus (1939-2013)

A native of Northern Ireland, a major contemporary poet and a Nobel Laureate in literature.  One of the best known and loved poets of our times.  My prompt here is his poem Digging.




Livelihoods

I don’t really know what my grandfather

did for a living.  He told me that for

a time he was in jute in Narayangunj

but that folded, ruined during the great war.

Some sort of rehearsal, some vague template

he supposed in hindsight, for the loss of much

greater things. “Once their world war was sorted,

ours began,” he said, but didn’t touch

on exactly how. A private bank, banks

could be private then, took him on, but then

went bankrupt itself,  in an ironic twist

unappreciated by jobless men.

I know what my father did for a living

though. He planned buildings, big and small,

urban and in the mofussils, swimming-pooled

in the back, terraced gardens, mirrored hall;

three bedroomed, pigeonholed working class flats;

and winged bungalows with wrap-around patios

office blocks that blocked sunlight and moonrise

of slums in their long, afternoon-shadows.

He designed homes, roofs all his working life

built walls around people, cupped hands with utmost

care, shielding other flames, other lives, built

homes to compensate for the one he had lost.

My grandfather’s dead, now gone many years

and my father’s old, lives in a flat planned

by someone else, after a  long career.

And I still don’t know what nestles in my hand,

am I digging? perhaps I am.  How should

a detached lake connect back to the flow? force

its way through the clay, cut channels into mud

join back the river that has changed its course?

H is for Handicrafts, of which India has a Huge variety, textiles, ceramics, brass and silverware, woodwork, paintings/art, stone inlays, traditional sculpture, no end to it.  However, parts of this Heritage, where skills are Handed down through the generations, are also in danger of being lost, because the work doesn't pay enough and so the younger generation must needs turn to something else. 

H is also for Heroes, and my grandfather is one of mine. He was born in the late 1800, a posthumous child, and lived into his nineties.  He saw two World Wars, and the Indian Partition and faced monumental hardships, but stayed upright.  Literally. He walked straight as a ramrod, he was a tall man, and I did not see him bend ever.  He passed away on this day many years ago.  Remembering him with great respect and love.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2015