The fields were sudden bare
– John Clare
Across the field,
a half-mile or more away – across
a dry liquid rustle of oats – a combine moves …
slow as a clock. Its smoke-&
-dust plume flags its position as it
cuts
the first swath close
to the headland’s hedge – as it
begins
to turn
the dun shimmer of ripe
crop to dropped
rows of mangled gold.
The combine is focused. Relentless.
Its work is our food – is feeding
on bits of a year’s patience. Its moves
are measured
in acres or hectares, depending
on your generation, and tonnes
or hundred-weights are terms
of its success. At this distance
– from across the vast field of
sheer cereal – we see
its cab is an intensely fixed gaze
itsiwith no man in it –fixeea Cyclops’ glass eye
that every now & every a
itsigain glints –&ionly sees
itsi with no man in it –fixeea Cyclopsthe reflection
it’ll show us when we’re close
up:
a revolving mouth & corn augured in. ( For an auger is
a helical bit used
to convey material
or force it through
an aperture. )
The combine’s followed
by a completely obedient companion:
the tractor that hauls trailer-fulls of living weight the combine
takes
off Earth. At this
distance
– from across the vast field of ground that holds all the time
of grass’s evolving –
the slow
eating is silent, there’s only
the oats’ desiccated giggle of August, and a skylark’s
sonorous tumbling. The combine
is a world away. Across an ocean. But soon
the combine’s hum and
rumbling will
be audible, its work will
smell of diesel, it will
exhale
machinery’s hot stink, thick black drips
will glisten on stubble. The combine’s
noise builds
– as its distance
from us recedes – it brings
a ground-vibrating thrust of dust. Hiss mixed with thunder
– millionsvibrofing toldust ohoof-plodss micross,
all at once, a continent of enclosures, with the wind
’s ghosts …
Suddenly harvest is fast. And the vast field is
receding beneath blades
of fading-away
ages-old
grasses. The combine
is here
now
with us in
this corner of
the field
close
up
we can see
past
the machine’s
glass
-reflections into
an air
-conditioned cab.
(First draft: circa 1999/2000)
Cover image: Dominique Cameron, Field Margin, charcoal on panel, 2020
dominiquefcameron.com
This is part of FIELDS, a section of The Learned Pig devoted to exploring fields as natural and (agri)cultural, invisible and visible, poor and productive, created and creators. FIELDS is conceived and edited by Marloe Mens.
