THE PLOUGHMAN
By Danny Hughes

Those were the bad old slavish days, I remember them so well,

When I rose to the calls of the squawking crows and the cries of the hungry hens

When I set out to plough the stubbled fields with my belly not half filled,

And the frost and the rain knee deep in the trough of the sodden drills.

Up and down the self same fields I ploughed so many times before

with my young man’s face whipped by the biting cold that pained my every pore.

A cheeky robin on a white thorned bush sang songs as if t’was Spring,

To him the world with all its ills was fit for any king.

My horses trundled wearily as I cursed their lazy pace,

Great suds of sweat rose from their flanks and the frost clung to their face.

A sore limb hare ran o’er the drills chased by a howling dog

I watched him scurry for his life into a nearby bog.

Within my world of boyish dreams I built castles in the air

and comely maidens gave me love and caressed my long black hair.

Still on my cheek is the tender touch of lips so young, so soft, so kind,

that made my heart beat with joy each day more than a million times.

But like an arrow’s speedy flight my sweet dreams all fly by

And there in stark reality is the world before my eyes,

The howling wind, the ice cold rain upon my weathered beaten limbs,

The depravity of all these storms, my heart with anger fills.

Alas! the parasite of ageing years has lavished on my bones

And triumphant in its victory, it reaches for my soul,

But human life’s resilience to the chilling winds of death,

it no yielding from my indomitable soul,

which treasures every breath.

And so in a mellowed symphony of thought I revel in my ease

and count the moments in my life that made my soul so pleased.

Yon cheeky robin on his white thorned bush still sings his song of Spring,

And as I listened to its lingering melody I feel so like a king,

Encompassed in the memory of the past, the present, and the future

Upon my pillow every night my dreams are so confusing,

But pain and toil and worrying and the slumbering hours of sleep,

are the pinnacle of life’s accomplishment,