Read This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You Online
Authors: Jon McGregor
the
floods and
our world
will
become
unmappable, alien,
precarious.
I didn’t say you said it was my fault
These same floods
that obliterate
bring life to the land, make
our soil the richest in the country.
At ploughing time the smell of the earth hangs in the air,
a smell like apple bruises and horse chestnut shells.
A smell of pure energy.
Your father claimed this ground
would grow five-pound notes
if you planted a shilling.
That I would like to see.
Flatness | straight lines | a manmade geometry.
The sound of metal on soil // the sky above
This is the landscape
you I
we grew up in.
This is the landscape
which grew us
which made us.
The sea wants to be here.
we shouldn’t be surprised when
will give
to that
Our engineering
gives
way
before the sea’s
desire.
You didn’t say that. That’s not what you said
to name these places
The words we’ve been given
by our ancestors
have no poetry.
Our waterways are called drains,
not rivers or streams or brooks or burns:
Thirty Foot Drain
Sixteen Foot Drain
(and the closest to grandeur, this) Hundred Foot Drain
our farms named for anonymity: Lower Field Farm
Middle Field Farm
Sixteen Foot Farm
People don’t come here because they’ve been
People are not drawn here by the romantic sound of the place.
People don’t much come here at all, and so the landscape
remains empty and
retains its beauty and
the beauty of this place is not in the names but the shapes
the flatness / hugeness / completeness of the landscape.
Only what is beneath the surface of the earth is hidden
(and sometimes not even that)
and
everything else
is
made visible beneath the sky.
When the dawn comes
when the first light slides in from the east
the sky is the colour of marbles.
A thin, glassy grey.
Everything is dark away to the west,
silhouettes & shadows clinging to the last of the night,
but at the eastern
edge of the
horizon there is light.
And
If you have the time to stand and watch,
you can trace the movement of the light into the morning.
The lines of fields & roads creeping
towards you and then away to the west
until the
whole
geometry of the day is revealed.
And
The water in the drains begins to steam & shine.
And you’ll notice
The workers start to arrive,
stepping out from minibuses and spreading across the fields,
shadows crouching & shuffling
along the
crop-lines
lines of the crops.
When the mid-morning comes
the sky is the colour of flowering linseed
a pale-blue hint of
the full colour to come
Sometimes there will be clouds,
joining together to form arches
from horizon
to
horizon
stretching
tearing
scattering patterns across the fields.
Sometimes these clouds bring rain,
and the sky will darken
But the rain will pass
the sky be brighter clearer
The workers more visible,
returning to their trays & boxes after the rain,
lifting food from the ground,
sorting
trimming
laying down
moving along the line.
Occasionally one will stand, lifting cramped arms to the sky before
returning to the soil.
Those lifted arms, that arching back.
When the noon-time comes
(when there’s a moment of stillness and silence)
the sky is the colour of the summer noon:
a blue with no comparison
the pure deep blue of the summer noon in this place.
No clouds
no movement
you hold your breath and turn and follow the
circle of the
unbending horizon line
horizon’s circle.
The workers eat their lunch in silence, gathered beside the road,
looking out across the fields
the way fishermen watch the sea.
Celery &
spring onions &
leeks &
lettuces &
fragile crops which would be ruined by machinery.
When the late afternoon comes
(when the light is only beginning to
fade from the day
fall)
the sky is the colour of a freshly forming bruise.
The workers are slowing their pace
pausing
more frequently
to savour
the warmth of the soil in their hands
aware
now
of the slight chill in the air
waiting
for the word that the day is over.
- - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - -
What placement can do.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
When the evening comes
(before the embers of the closing of the day)
the sky is the colour of your father’s eyes.
A darkening, muddied blue,
hiding shadows
turning away. Awake, still;
alive, just;
but going.
Going gently.
The workers have left the field and collected their pay,
measured by the weight of the food they have gathered.
The marks of their footprints are fading,
dusted over with soil blown in by a wind from the sea.
What he thought he’d find.
There is no history here.
No dramatic finds of Saxon villages.
No burial mounds or hidden treasures.
No Tollund Man.
Only the rusted anchors our ploughs drag up,
left when these fields were the sea.
Those rusted anchors have been sunk in the soil
ever
since before it was drained, and sometimes
the turning of the earth brings them closer to the surface
and sometimes
it
will
sends them further down.
Buried out there at the edge of the field.
Butyouwerethere
The sound of plough metal on soil, the roar
of stones & earth.
As he/it
Tumbles further down or is hauled to the surface.
break the flat surface
That field. In that field. Down by that field.
The floods have come, again,
the road like a causeway
across the sea.
T h e w a t e r s t r e t c h e d a s f a r a s t h e h o r i z o n
t h e
h o r i z o n
l o s t
i n t h e
t h i c k
f o g.
Telegraph poles dotted
across the water
like the masts
of sunken boats.
The cars marooned. High & dry.
Piercing red lights suspended in a long line through the fog.
The mists of yesterday have disappeared,
the sky reflected clearly in the flooded fields
the sky reflected clearly in the flooded fields.
The day is broken open & clear:
the great ship of Ely Cathedral
just visible
across the water.