The Work of the Maker

Inside the shed the air is still and hot; despite the gaps around the ill-fitting door and window panes, there is not a breath of wind within to stir the ancient cobwebs; a thicket of work-stained, pole-handled tools – wooden shafts dirt-darkened and worn from labour, dull metal blades pock-marked and speckled with brown rust – covers the grimy window; opposite, the least damaged and most useful tools are arrayed; here wood shines with the factory finish, plastic handle grips are only slightly worn down, the spikes and teeth and edges of the instruments are keen and unstained; the floor is naked earth, and strewn with the plastic shards of ruined pot and planter; the boards and planks that make up the walls are of the type that may swell with rot in the rainy seasons and become brittle in the dry heat, cracked from doing just so, and marked with trails of gastropod’s silver slime. In one of the less desirable corners, a pierced watering-can drains filthily into the dirt, a moist film of mud coating the bottom surface – perhaps the only wet thing within miles.

Hands unhook the latch, push the door inwards against the resistance of the protesting hinges – the hands of the Maker: he who took his hands to fork and spade and churned the hot earth, made furrows in it with plough and hoe, and, water and soft words, raised from it tender shoots that, swelling with age, fed him. The tools are his: each one an instrument of life in his hands, a device of torture that he uses to rip, from the clay of nature’s womb, the fleshy greens. The shed is his: each tool within is a symbol of Man’s dominion. The land upon which the shed is built is his land: its tenants – caterpillars, snails and brown spiders – are subject to his laws and penalties. The sun rises early to illuminate his work, beats frustratedly down upon his stooped, straining figure and the reddened back of his neck, and sets early in accordance with his sleeping schedule.

The air is hot, but the fuel is cold and wet as it sloshes into the dusty petrol tank. Yes, fill me. Satisfy my hunger. Slake my thirst. The tarpaulin is torn from the rust-spotted bonnet, spider skins and dry splinters are brushed away, blades checked with the care of a professional for the tools of his trade. A little corroded, perhaps, but no less wicked-edged for that. I grow old. Do not we all? These old hands, even, seem to tremble as they screw on the lid of the fuel tank, where they did not tremble so many years ago. Made brittle by sun and age, the split tyre-rubber squeaks as the old machine labours forth, with little of the vigour of the young. Beyond the doorframe, the grass grows long in the parched dirt. For too long, you have not known my blade. Feel it now. There is no wind, but the pale stems shiver. The sun probes the flaking orange paint that yet clings to the hood, the iron lung within breathes in thick air, a decomposing rubber handle stains the rough skin of the hand that touches it with black. The touch of death. I pity you, Maker. A sharp tug on a chord, and a second, infuse some spark of life in the engine, which, heavy with dewy slumber, now retches.

The life that endures within my shattered shell roars as my belly fills with fire, every breath smoking in the thick, throbbing air. I take choking, sobbing breaths, and I live again; my veins bulge with ice; dust floats dislodged from my trembling gullet; the great blades, gummy with sleep and age, begin to turn, and whisper once more the cutting hymns. Weeds and roots that would dare grow upon the consecrated soil, the blesséd earth from which Man coaxes life, unrequested, shrink from the keening edge of my wrath. Stems that would hinder the work of the Maker – I am your ruin. I am the Lawn-mower, Plain-maker, weed-leveller. Look upon the apocalypse, lesser-than-I, and despair. Strew the littered earth, damned plants – or crowd my gut. Fill the sky, beauteous rage.

Toothed metal separates grass stem from blade, flings up stinging stalks and clods that join the furious gale of machine-breath – brown stalks bow before each throaty roar; more still clog the great throat and stomach, entangled in the silk spider’s threads that embellish the hard plastic ridges. With each revolution of the knife-rimmed wheels, leafy flesh is sliced so finely it boils as sweet-smelling fragrance in the atmosphere. Each shriek of tortured rubber announces the advance of the deadly zone, the extension of the black rubber trail upon the lawn. The work is almost done. What grass survives in the dead soil is cropped shorter than a day’s growth of bristles upon the plane of nature’s visage – deep and ragged gouges, clotted with dry clods, leak earth where the blades have carved into the ground.

My hood, daubed with orange war-paint, is hot enough to set the air around to boiling, heated by the labouring engine that lies just below the metal skin. Where once the Maker had wrestled for control, sweated like the poor wretch spitted over Satan’s bonfire, bellowed and grunted with the exaltation of the fight, now he maintains a perfect course across the scorched plain – my fury is throttled by his iron fist, my every action obedient. My operator manhandles me like a yoked ox around turns that I would once have dragged him through, threatening to rip free from his grip. My veins no longer pulse with ice, my belly is almost full of fragrant grass, my breaths come fast and heavy and foul, my knives are blunted from good use. A twist of a knob stops the pumping of my heart, sets me gasping as my lung deflates. I shriek my discontentment toward the sun as I fade, once more, into cool sleep.