Alf Smith was his name, though, we should remember him

As more than the labourer on a small Welsh farm

Who milked the cows and tended every farmer whim;

Twice daily fitting clusters onto teats and pouring milk to churns,

Taken for collection to stand beside the lane between the ferns.

Twice daily, too, he cleaned the shed with hose and broom

And waited to hear what chores would fill his waking hours

His are the menial tasks: in summer sun or winter gloom

To walk to field flock or herd, check ditches, carry peat

Bring tools, load bales: not for him the tractor's seat.

For his food and roof he laboured hard and long with small return

The whitewashed sheds, the bale stacks, the tidy yards

The dairy and the cattle shed were all his chief concern

Too often there was unkind word and impatient yell

He took it all, but his complaints were muttered well.

His weathered face and kindly smile, his old suit jacket, and his cap

Greased shiny from years of leaning into stock; his self-rolled smoke

And gentle voice define this part of him that I first knew - but leaves a gap.

Before the farm he walked the road and worked a summer week

On farms he passed along his way. No one knew - or seemed to seek

His story, except he came from Bristol where there may have been a sister or a wife

From whom the war had distanced him, he would not say. Now he walked the country way

To work and stay until the urge to move took hold: a traveller's life.

He slept under hedge or hidden in a barn when the sky was lost to storm

Walking the same route year on year, the seasons set the form

Until he tired of travel and settled down to labour on that small Welsh farm

That after many years of toil left him to  settle in a caravan beside the yard

To pass his later years at peace with life, at last some years of resting calm -

Remember him, then, for he will always be a part of this farm's past

Staid as the land, this kindly man whose life beneath the stars was vast.