The Land: a poem by Hasani

Hasani is a member of Freedom from Torture's creative writing group Write to Life. 'The Land' is a poem insired by JMW Turner's painting 'Hedging and Ditching'. Hasani performed the poem at the Tate and at Freedom from Torture's food event The Big Cook Up in June 2012.

The soft sound of the ploughshare

As it cuts through the wet, rich earth

An acrid smell of sweat from labourers

As they bend to their toil.

A dark cloud hangs above the sky

Heavy with rain, waiting for the peasants

To finish the hedging and ditching

Of the land

Before it opens its floodgates.

And the land, like a helpless patient, lies

As new veins are cut through it

To contain the fury of the rain.

Land the food provider

Land the cause of wars

Land the maker of landlords, landowners, land barons.

We spit on you, we shit on you, we piss on you

You are our mother, nourishing all your children

Worker and idle alike.

Greedy and cruel you have made the honest man

He covets you.

'Sons of the soil', he shouts,

'Take up arms and reclaim your land!'

Whose land? His land?

My land

Our land

Hasani has blogged about the collaboration between Write to Life and the Tate.