RING DONG FOREVER

Farrell's machine laid the peat out in rows
of brown and black mixed, no racism here.
We felt the fresh sod, squeezed it through fingers,
the texture of  butter; turf new year.
And we watched it for weeks, three or four,
then nodded agreement, its fit to foot,
the fussy ones started, the patient ones waited
for more days and rays and Leavy's, the hut.

I made it before,  time ago with my father
and neighbours and grey shaggy ass
and bottles of tay and fat bacon sandwich
when hay was hay and silage was grass.
And we earned ten shillings, half of a pound
to spend as we pleased in Maggie Murray's
for a week of six days and sunburnt neck
in a time of no nights, just eighteen hour days.

They said it was hardship then, back-breaking toil,
And now it was cushy, time to spend in the shade.
With tractors and trailors and steel transport boxes
and no-one can tell you the price of a spade
or a slane or a billhook or grim reaper scythe,
or a half pound a tay or a quarter of plug,
But fire's still fire and roast red and warming
one bog-hole behind, one three-quarter dug.