The potato-grading machine Poem by Herman Hendrik ter Balkt

At the time I lived in a country
where the potato-grading machine arrived.

From salted wood made with many rains
it worked as a monotonous brain.

It graded into three sizes
as a self-contained farming computer.

It always rained when it came
as if it was propelled by that rain.

Something darkened drove it,
something faded; like the matriarchy.

The cupboards held old Jozo salt
and axes leaned to in the woods.

The pig also came to look at it:
with a green eye over its gate.

It was quite smart this wooden machine,
behind its guard of burlap bags!

The smallest potatoes fell
at once through the topmost mesh.

It had three platforms, made of wood
and wire, dancing askance, a little obscure.

The smallest potatoes pelted
down like fat drops of rain;

the larger ones ended up on the middle
hatch and the fattest rolled proud on top.

You witnessed this, found it hard to grasp
it was always painted blue,

and may well have come from China, from
the far off flat carriages of the horizons,
from the ferret-like distance and the dark.

It always rained when it came.
It was a regal machine

As the rain also fell more solemnly then
as if it fell at a royal court.

I do not regret it, the potato-raining machine.
I sometimes think about it.

It was the most dented among the machinery.
Parcival: ridiculed by the elegant aftergrass.

But the clouds had a soft spot for it
and the rain caught up with it as a herd.

Translation: 2008, Willem Groenewegen