Monday, November 29, 2010

House-stealing monsters

tractor detail

"...The tractors came over the roads
and into the fields,
great crawlers moving like insects,
having incredible strength of insects.

They crawled over the ground,
laying the track
and rolling on it
and picking it up.

Diesel tractors,
puttering while they stood idle;
they thundered when they moved,
and then settled down to a droning roar.

Snub-nosed monsters,
raising the dust and sticking their snouts in it,
straight down the country,
across the country,
through fences,
through dooryards,
in and out of gullies in straight lines.


They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds.
They ignored hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses..."


the tractors


I started re-reading the Grapes of Wrath the other night. It's feeling incredibly...relevant right now, and if you're like me and haven't read it since high school I think you need to give it some attention.