‘Asparagus Bones’ is an ode to the rooting of agriculture in place. Yet Murray’s celebration of the rural as nourishment and model of good society also indicates a more complex setting. The ‘half-million of the coolroom’ signals a global export market awaiting those boxes of spears. And the man helping himself to this high-end homegrown produce for a writers’ festival banquet has an exceptional entitlement.

There is nothing transactional about Stefano de Pieri and Les Murray’s provisioning excursion. Nothing that indicates the normal business of food as we ordinary consumers know it. Yet, there is something in this scene, its harking back to earlier, simpler times and special arrangements, that helps us imagine a different set of conditions for the growing and sharing of food than those that currently rule our world.