Carucate

Lyrics

The rider comes down with a wax-tethered roll
To tally the valley in black charcoal.
He squints from the ridge at the edge of the pines
And boxes the winter in two steady lines.
He calls it a whole, so simple and smooth,
While I scrape the rot from the oxen's hooves.

Oh, it's one neat stroke on a vellum page,
But it's a hundred days in the driving rain.
It's eight heavy heads pulling deep in the clay,
Praying that the leather can take the strain.
They count it as done if the weather holds fair,
If the iron stays sharp, if the beasts are there.

There's a bald white patch on the lead-steer's hide
Where the ash-wood yoke rubbed the hair aside.
My hands know the dip of the furrow by heart,
The muscle pulls back 'fore the thinking can start.
But the ledger ignores the buried flint stone
That catches the blade and splinters the pole.

It makes for a beautiful map in the hall.
It lets them compare us without looking close.
We share the same math for the harvest and yield,
But they don't have to sleep at the edge of the field.

'Cause it's one neat stroke on a vellum page,
And a hundred days in the driving rain.
It's eight heavy heads pulling deep in the clay,
Praying that the leather can take the strain.
They count it as done if the weather holds fair,
If the iron stays sharp, if the beasts are there.

Eight beasts in the harness.
One mark in the ink.
If the traces hold out.
If the river don't sink.
They say this is what one man can do.
If nothing goes wrong.
And something always goes wrong.