Oh! I hear you ! When you receive this letter you will say: “What’s the matter with this guy writing to us? If he had such important things to tell us, things about misery and rage, he could have come. Another kid with smooth hands who wants to teach us his lessons. » Yes, you will say that. And you will be right.
I’m just a kid, it’s true, one of those who ran through your corn when it was in season, who yelled in your silos when they were almost empty, who admired your dogs when they guided your animals and who dreamed of machines while watching you pass by. When I think back, all my childhood, I only saw you working. You were already on the farm when I went to school and you were still there when I came back in the evening. There, sitting on your tractors, without ever counting the hours and even less rolling over the gold, you turned over the ground to fill our bellies, pay off your debts, sculpt the landscapes – and damn, I was attached to these landscapes.
Since then I grew up, it happens to everyone, I moved to the suburbs, it happens even to the best, I became a writer, I could have had a worse outcome, and from time to time, of course, I come back to Earth. Oh, not like you, not by gambling on it with my life, I just get my hands dirty with two of my friends – one is a breeder and the other a market gardener –, I take out the carrots, I walk in front of the animals and I smoke my first cigarette while watching the sun rise as I smoke my last one when the world is silent and, counting my aches and pains, I thank you in a low voice: it’s thanks to you that my stomach is well. He carries your landscapes within him.
There, I see you smiling. “Now that he has brushed us well in the direction of the hair the best will come, we know the maneuver and we know the rest, he will tell us about the bastard products that we throw on our land. I told you he had lessons. » No I do not have any. No lessons to give when we know your love for the earth. No lessons when we know that you are the first to take these bastard products for your health. No lessons yet because, behind it, there are the soils which are depleting, the competition to catch up, the yields to maintain, the banks to repay, the food groups to satisfy, the large distribution chains to satisfy, the shareholders to fatten; and all that for almost nothing. Yes, I have seen you toil enough to know that you have a job in dealing with poverty. And for too many generations.
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