Herbert Nehrlich - Young Farmers

I'd spent so many summers on my uncle's farm
and loved to feel the roots of rightful, old tradition.
Our day began when Mr. Sandman passed and the alarm
was getting ready to convey programmed decision
to him, my rival brother and myself at 1/2 past three.

We did the chores involving the menagerie
of cows and pigs and horses, chickens, geese.
Who all had spent the night to manufacture and then drop
their multicoloured excrements up to their knees.
We laboured, mucking with enthusiasm and non-stop.

Sucking the morning's freshest, slightly soiled warm egg
before the real breakfast of much hearty nature beckoned,
fresh cream drawn from the silver separator keg
and ham and sausages, fatback, we always reckoned,
that, if the Life of Reilly needed new inventing
it would be found with ease on our favourite farm.
And. come to think of it, bet anyone, the devil, on repenting
his evil life, would gladly, happily fall for the charm
of country life in nineteenfifty, when the world was good,
when greed had stayed in castles and in Roman spires,
when man was kind to man and knew he would
be well and happy, healthy, free to sire
enduring decency in future generations.
And those, my friend, those were the days,
when basic goodness never rested on sensations
of goods and services and prostituting yeahs and nays.

Herbert Nehrlich

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