I’m no farmer’s son, I know.
I have neither spine nor spirit to rule
The farmyard, to work the machinery,
To cross the cowdung-matted grass
And knot electric fences. I cannot stand
The sheds of mewling kittens, shoddy, thin –
You could lift them, sorry things,
By the handle of their tummies
And toss them to their mother’s teat
Behind some burnt-out tractor wheel.
The haybarns, like museum atriums:
Hay trampled black into the floor,
Tired machinery stood about like fossils.
There’s a dead badger I found,
In one corner, behind a rusting baler,
Its milky eyes and swollen tongue
Just dreadful.
Then, in the bright parlour, the farmer’s son,
Rubbing sleep from his eyes,
Paces the jungle of ropes and suckers,
Where overalls hang in shifts,
And spiders the size of kittens
Scatter about in the milky slush.
And then – then there’s the slurry pit,
That black, slugging well
Where “once, a cow fell down.”
Fat bluebottles line the edge, untroubled
By the thick, prickling film of fumes –
I keep six feet away
And leave my welly boots by the door.
The kitchen’s warm and smoky,
The oven, lit. The farmer sits,
Warm, unpasteurised milk dripping,
Filling up his beard.