Liber Terrae - Chapter 17

Verses

My father called the field mean. My mother called it tired. I learned later that both words meant we had planted too much wheat.

The soil does not love you because it feeds you. Feed it nothing and see how quickly the romance ends.

We carried manure in winter and grain in summer; this was our theology of exchange.

Rain was not a blessing when the roof leaked, nor a curse when the barley needed it.

A farmer becomes suspicious of simple gods.

We buried three dogs, one uncle, and more kittens than I care to count beside the old wall.

The apricot tree grew best there. Make of that what doctrine you can endure.

Earth is a mother, yes, but mothers also become exhausted.

Do not praise fertility while refusing the labor that keeps it fertile.

Every harvest is a withdrawal from an account written in worms, fungi, roots and years.

The city man says dirt as an insult. I have seen dirt rescue a family from hunger.

I have also seen one bad season turn good dirt into dust and good men into beggars.

Therefore I trust neither abundance nor despair for very long.

Seed is optimism with a hard shell.

Plowing is violence performed in hope of bread.

Harvest is gratitude carrying a knife.

When I die, put me where the roots can argue over me. I have eaten from this field long enough.