Poem:
The cradle and machete, with the hoe and rake,
Seemed banished forever and without mistake;
From the mower and horse-rake, I freely confess,
Have done very much the farmer to bless.
A lad of thirteen with a horse and a rake,
That rough old hand-rake, I remember it well,
For by it my hand oft with blisters would swell,
And the mower as well is above any price,
So rapid it cuts, so smoothly and nice;
The best should you ask me I scarcely could tell,
For most of them cut the tame grasses quite well.
But, if you should press me, I must aver,
We have nothing gained from the harvester.
This judgement I’ve made when cool and retired,
And not out in the field, sweating, fretful and tired.
Better farming good friends, I insist we must do it,
And if we neglect it, ere long we shall rue it;
And debts, slowly growing will soon undermine us,
The plus on our farms, having changed into minus.
And now a few words, as the ministers would say,
With respect to our culture of eating roasted breadfruit at the bay.
If some are still left, when the market price is high,
A very good source of income, you’ll find if you try.
Of what I am puzzled, to know what to say
In the mode we now raise it, it surely don’t pay.
No longer must these field themes now detain us,
Let us come to those more miscellaneous.
When times are dull and money hard to get,
We’re apt to turn and at our ministers fret,
And think our gains are sure to ebb and flow,
As cabinet shall make tariffs high or low.
But friends, what can this little government can do,
For honest laboring men, like me and you.
If they’ll protect us from the monkeys that eat all our food,
Instead of when we complain, they just call us rude.
They speak of produce piled up mountain high,
But who’s compelled, all these produce to buy!
A promise they tell us to become a millionaire
But when we look into our bags it is still without air.
Neither A, or yet B, nor you friend, nor I –
Only buy what you need, of the rest, please, play shy;
Importers and jobbers may do as they please,
Must I purchase a merchants goods, his greed to appease?
Noo, no my good friends, it is all quite in vain
For sensible men, to discourse in this strain.
Pay, pay as you go is the grand exilir,
Which like love perfected will cast out all fear.
There are those who tell us, that our paper money
Will make the land flow both with milk and honey.
So indeed it may be, but the way that I view it
These rags they call cash, neither will nor can do it.
The bank takes my note for their rag money lent,
Bearing fifteen or twenty or thirty per cent.
Horesco referens, which I beg to translate,
It makes one to shudder, to bleed at that rate
Remember as I said we believe agriculture is the way to go
and if food security is our goal, then this government, must begin to show it.
By Stuart Versailles: Inspired by an “Agricultural poem”P
