May Poem of the Month: The Gardener’s Song

The Gardener’s Song

I do not drive the tractor,
I do not speed the plough,
I doubt if I could even squeeze
A teardrop from a cow.

“Tis in a quiet garden
I toil away the hours
To raise the nation’s food supply,
Not merely gather flowers.

My nose is quite as freckled,
As horny is my palm,
as painful my sciatica
As any on the farm.

Bare-handed, now, the woodlouse
I squash with deadly aim;
I’ve turned the hosepipe on myself
And tumbled through a frame.

Although the Press ignores us,
The public thinks us duds,
How would they like their Sunday beef
Without its green and spuds?

So when you cook your carrots,
Your onions and your leeks,
Thanks us, who not unworthily
Display the Land Girl’s breeks.

In Britain’s glorious future,
Secure from threat of war,
The generations now unborn
Cry, “Grandma, tell us more

Of what you did when Britain’s siege
The Nazi hordes confounded.”
“I’m one of those who helped to Dig
For Victory—and found it!”

Joan Sutcliffe, WLA No 14461 (Denbighshire)
Published in The Land Girl, October 1940, p.4.