Brute tractor
A monster was coming on at me,
Devouring the world, all I could see,
Such was its all-consuming presence,
That nothing else composed an absence.
Crashing there, pulverising closer.
A beast advanced over the border.
*
Now, sounds of the English countryside,
Herald a fresh hell of herbicide.
An incessant whine of brute machine
Counterpoising the crack, crunch and scream
Of advancing chains flailing hedges,
Even trees and all the quiet edges.
Fields once in early autumn slumber,
Bough and branch in myriad number,
Are beaten into low submission.
Heavy-handed ironbound precision
Bullies countryside's casual borders
Into tame and abased neat order.
Now reducing full forage hedgerows,
In all their blowsy carefree billows,
Into managed new factory walls;
As close as the jackboot tractor crawls.
Those linear woods, trashed in thoughtless
Haste, make a sad wake in wakes of mess.
These linear woods are all that's left
Of a landscape that is now bereft
Of the deciduous eternal
Hanging woods which once clothed the feral
Land from east to west, from south to north.
A greenwood cover of endless growth.
Now, ev'ry year hedges try anew,
To regrow once more and save a few.
Hawthorns! Their remembered sweet fragrance
In blossom clouds of creamy cadence,
But there they are, hacked back more and more
Till all that's left is jagged and raw.
They won't be laid traditionally.
Every advance drives on more fiercely
Into older and thicker timber,
Till the gross impact upon your ear
Is in due accord with the ravaged
Scene: wood and nerves are together shred.
Now, never mind the long standing tree.
And farmers won't see the bird or bee.
For what cannot be seen counts as nought.
Subtle lessons like these can't be taught
To those immured within tractor walls,
Or logged into cool persuasive malls.
Then his tea, in towered splendour, he sips.
And with insouciant fingertips
Nudges on hundreds of horsepower might,
Never giving one thought to the sight
Of tangled despoilment left behind
After the flailing chains' savage grind.
Now, with protection wrapped round his face,
Headphones musicking a deaf embrace,
To insulate the remote cabbed man
From all consequences of his plan.
So deafness mutates this crashing hell.
With never a witness left to tell.
Aye, the crashing sound above all else
Has no regard of pastoral sense.
It surely would dumbfound old hedgers
Thankfully safe now in quiet slumbers.
Would they swap craft's old occupation
For this coarse new manifestation?
Now, a poet wand'ring in Nature
Seeks his peace in this secret treasure;
For wind and song are quintessential;
Listen! And be mute deferential.
For there is peace and sweet harmony
In measuring life's geometry.
Still the brute tractor masticates on.
Jaws chewing; weight thrown about; and strong
Enough to pulverise any foe.
What hope can there be of tomorrow?
Yet wait, the pregnant buds still prepare
For to try once more another year.
Now the ogre leaves the margin'd stage
(And a poet in impotent rage!),
The hedging tree will lick its spirit.
And the only good to come of it,
If calm reflection matters a toss,
Is to help us value what we've lost.
© R M Meyer
North Devon, October 2018
