Country Living Poem by NurViktoria Ellen

Country Living

Dead in the heart
of the countryside
you develop a knack for
drowning out the roar of tractor-combines-four-by-fours
here vegetarians discover a talent to ignore
the road-kill: collateral damage from a never-ending stream of
cars just speeding through –
nobody in their right mind wants to be here –
they are passing on the way to safer places
thundering past our silenced hedges
to get the hell out of here

Life – you won’t find much of it in the English countryside
Here we’re all geared towards death and armed to the teeth
slug-killing
mercilessly weeding
wielding insecticides
Genetic monotony rules supreme
over googled fields
satellite-controlled crops and surveillanced peasants
severed hedgerows and stumped trees
pesticide-fuelled rape
castrated flocks
on exhausted soil