The Child of the Plough
Flesh of the yoke, he was born
more humbled than handsome,
with his neck plagued
by the neck-yoke.
He is born, like a tool,
destined to receive the blows
of a discontented land
and an unsatisfied plough.
Amongst dung pure and alive
from cows, he brings into life
a soul the colour of olives,
now old and silent.
He begins to live, and he begins
to die bit by bit
raising the crust
of his mother with the yoked oxen.
He begins to feel, and he feels
life is like a war,
and in his fatigue he knocks
against the bones of the earth.
He cannot count his age,
yet he knows that sweat
is a solemn crown
of salt for the labourer.
He works, and while he works,
serious and masculine,
he is anointed with rain and adorned
with cemetery flesh.
From the blows, strong,
and from the sun, burnished,
with an ambition for death
he tears apart the hard-fought bread.
With each new day he is
more like a root, less like a human being,
listening beneath his feet
the voice of the sepulchre.
And like a root he sinks down
slowly into the earth
so that the earth can flood
his brow with peace and bread.
I am pained by this hungry child,
a skeleton in skin,
and his ashen life
turns over my soul of oak.
I see him plough the stubble,
and devour a scrap of food,
and declare with his eyes
why is he flesh of the yoke.
His plough strikes at my chest,
his life at my throat,
and it pains me to see the earth
so great, so bare beneath his feet.
Who will save this little child,
smaller than an oat grain?
From where will come the hammer
executioner of this chain?
May it come from the hearts
of labouring men,
who before they are men are
and have been children of the plough.