 |
| Wheat Ripe for Harvest |
For my father
James M. Hart
March 30, 1910
October 7, 1979
Harvesting Darkness
James Hart
Around our supper table tonight
we’ll explain away your empty chair
by telling children the old man’s late,
out in the fields harvesting darkness.
We’ll tell them how you only sowed
impeccably harrowed soil with cares,
wrapped your pains out in the fields
in bales of clover, timothy, and brome.
They’ll need to know you measured
your work in pecks, bushels, and tares,
counting your worth in the barn’s dark
bins brimming barley, wheat, and corn.
Any moment we expect your return
powdered in moonlight’s dusty grain,
weighing harvest in smiling words,
praising hay bound under the stars.
(From an unpublished manuscript
entitled In the Countryside of the Dead)
James Hart
Around our supper table tonight
we’ll explain away your empty chair
by telling children the old man’s late,
out in the fields harvesting darkness.
We’ll tell them how you only sowed
impeccably harrowed soil with cares,
wrapped your pains out in the fields
in bales of clover, timothy, and brome.
They’ll need to know you measured
your work in pecks, bushels, and tares,
counting your worth in the barn’s dark
bins brimming barley, wheat, and corn.
Any moment we expect your return
powdered in moonlight’s dusty grain,
weighing harvest in smiling words,
praising hay bound under the stars.
(From an unpublished manuscript
entitled In the Countryside of the Dead)
No comments:
Post a Comment