Words from This Land

And in these fields. . . .

The men go upon their machinery,

with the wind in the folds

of the furrow-shoulders.

(I have seen whirlwinds make a ring

like night with the darkness of swooped dirt.)

They go on their wheels through the earth,

their women watching with an ancient smile.

In the early morning sons call farewells,

farewells to the sound of the wind on the walls, .

to the ruts of the rain, to the small fearful shelters.

Hungry ways in the earth, and sorrowful beneath the wren's

whirring and ripple and flex

they go in the dark, in the quiet, in the sun,

bringing their time of terror

where the instruments of musicians

have the voices of women for their hearts.

And in these fields their fathers listen

in the lunge of the wind, feet in the loam's scars.