Hayland: An Intertext: Writing Lycidas through The Western Producer

By | 1 December 2013

Yet once more, in commodity crops, again in
aster yellows, with merits in stacked resistance,
I scramble for feed coverage
and demand the forward position.
It is important to reduce shattering before late crop
reports filter in. Bitter constraint is the face
of a challenging feed-price landscape.
I still have a fascination with teeth. Prime
Liberty knows what it’s like to play that
role. Who would not sing: there will be waste.
He marvels at the terminal design.
He must not float his own silage
out-yielded, weltered to the parching wind;
he has a critical need for shade.

Begin thin trade in sacred seed
wild relatives are preserved.
Begin and control unwanted volunteers,
foreign investors: you can’t put a face
to them. Some gentle men
would do what they had always
done. We create value.
And bid fair price in the sow stall barn.
For we nurst upon soft skills
fed the same stock the same birthing malformations.

Other specifications were difficult to meet.
Under the open embryos of the morn,
we drove a field by treating cells,
time has made crude imports difficult,
Battening on slow glass. Get metal in fresh due.
Take root, no need for a wet kit.
Toward harvest, you want them flush and cycling.
A place where people live
for their neighbors
tempered by the body condition score,
yet many investors would rather put their money
in the food chain. Absent are those who lamb about.
Growers have Heart, Valtera, Authority,

and Authority Charge. The crow benefit is gone
an innovation laggard to never return.
Safety and security
are watchwords, new sprouting tolerances
rolling the soil.
Wild speculation likely
is harmful. No more seen.
Flighting wear. The joy of feed efficiency laves
from annex to railcar, killing as the grain appeals.
Enlist technology. Graze the herd
the bale itself. The science supports
preconditioning, when the white thorn blows.
‘Excellence through stewardship’ on everyone’s ear.

Filling gravity boxes with remorseless depth.
At the dawn of a seasonal
softening in lean
hog. Unprecedented seed depth accuracy
in challenging terrain, over ridge
tops and through water streams.
Ay me, I fondly dream
of ‘genuity and design’ — for what could that have done
they already have orders
in canola singulation, her enchanting son.
What lament? Do keep in mind, we are trained
to kill animals. That made the hideous roar.
Cropping practices are the main
twin row market. They are essentially a pair

of genetic scissors. We call it editing,
with uncessant care. To commercialise technologies
for the shepherds trade, and strictly meditate the market.
Terminal seed. It is only natural.
The sport of augury in the afternoon shade
of shotgun sequencing. Beef has a future.
Faith is the spur that clears land rights
(That last infirmity of Noble mind).
Shoot, shovel and shut up. Live laborious.
An even hundred weight we hoped to find
the residual hide in sudden blaze,
physical signs of torsion with the abhorred shears,
he slits the thin spun life. But not the pagewire,
lambs steady, touch a fertile body;
no plants will grow on mortal soil,
where biotech traits are not permitted.
We triple the carrying capacity in broad rumoured lies,
it spreads aloft: ‘the picture they have conceived.’
Perfect witness of all intents
as he pronounces last each dead,
so much wheat in Heaven; expect my yield.

O Fountain flush Brahmin, the honoured flood
Smooth-sliding in recipients, crowned with our needs.
The strain herd was a progeny difference,
a proving ground,
listen to the herald of Talens
that came with price discovery.
He asks the wind, the clear field production system.
Hard call brought about by a loss in swine
weight, a specious gift
on fertile ground, each tusked propulsion
they are not of his story.
They confirm their buying position, their answer brings
a viral structure in a coat of proteins, strayed.
The capsid was calm, and on the level
sleek serotype with all her sisters played.
That fatal and perfidious maul
eclipsed the uniform coverage, and rigged the contortions
that sunk so low that sacred heart of lamb.

The Five Freedoms went footing slow in
packing houses and term chambers,
inwrought with din figures, and on the edge
that blood pudding inscribed with deference.
Going equipped to the dearest pledge.
Cost came, and last did go
in accelerated breeding techniques The
masses he bore of animals twain (The
hide opes, the iron shunts amain), he
shakes his mitered locks.
How could I have spared? The
outlook for hungry millions
remains precarious and climbs into the fold.
A community that loves harte
arbeit scrambles for the feast
the blind mouths we transvalue. We know how to hold
a sheep-hook, or have learned the slit at least
the faithful technician’s art belongs.
What rents them? What need they? They are sped
and when they list, their lean and flashy jaws
grate on pintle-style latches, wretched chute.
The hungry look up, and are not fed
swollen with wind; the rank draw
rot inward, and foul contagion spreads.
Devouring the space of nothing said.
But that two-handed axe at the door
stars ready to strike, the exotic known.

Fresh lap of blood on the dog day looks
like it might cover the drought
losses, the capper to all this is honied showers.
Seed shallow for ground cover
the bloom that forsaken dies.
The wild hyacinth
of weekly slaughter flecked
through futures bright.
All the passions of the chambered shed
revving
towards a little ease;
combustion is true dawn.
Wash far away, where bodies hurled
able danger of the world.
Savings are magnified in vows denied,
he slept through the fable of the land’s end
where the great visions of control
look toward hayland and the wheatbelt’s hold;
the injunction is denial now, and melts with feed additives
we have given the hapless, youth.

Plumes in the forelimb of the morning sky:
the cut sunk low, but mounted high,
Once more they walked the wavering
hill where others grow; day streams along
they hear the bleating nuptial
in the market of no retreat.
Herd in solemn troop, their glory moves
the beta agonists from his report.
We discuss red atrophy no more;
large recompense, and shalt be good
to all that wander in the chain of food.

The uncouth sing of stream and gills
while the stillborn morning went out with gray.
He touched the stalk of pedigree seed
and with eager thought proclaimed, the past
oral now; the treatment had stretched to all the hills
and was dropt into the western way.
At last he rose, twitching, as the spray blew
towards fresh lands, and pastures new.


The Western Producer, is a Canadian weekly newspaper, traditionally read on agricultural and livestock farms. It has recently become a dominant mouthpiece for Monsanto, pro-GM crop lobbies and the like. This rewriting of
Lycidas’ has taken its lexis entirely from the Dec.- March 2013 editions of the paper.

 


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