Farmyard

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.