I hear for every acre there’s a ton of worms beneath.

I hear that worm-meat’s better meat than fatted barley

  beef.

We’re farming only half our farms, and that’s the new

  belief.

 

I think I’m growing barley, bullocks, pigs and lambs

  galore.

From six a.m. till nine at night I toil my body sore.

But I’m only feeding the roots of the worms, it’s worms I’m

  working for.

 

Below my clover meadows worms are bellowing in the

  dark.

They’re bound for nobody’s oven, one or two might go to

  the lark.

They gobble their way through the earth’s black pudding

  safe as they were in the ark.

 

Worms riot and revel in their rude and naked hordes.

And most of what I fatten, far, far more than my farm

  affords

Falls into their idle mouths, and the whole lot live like

  lords.

 

from the collection ‘What is the truth?’