go back, if I wanted to,

my mind grew new, and lost

the backward way. I stood

at last, long hunter and child,

where this valley opened,

a word I seemed to know

though I had not heard it.

Behind me, along the crooks

and slants of my approach,

a low song sang itself,

as patient as the light.

On the valley floor the woods

grew rich: great poplars,

beeches, sycamores,

walnuts, sweet gums, lindens,

oaks. They stood apart

and open, the winter light

at rest among them. Yes,

and as I came down

I heard a little stream

pouring into the river.

2.

Since then I have arrived here

many times. I have come

on foot, on horseback, by boat,

and by machine – by earth,

water, air and fire.

I came with axe and rifle.

I came with a sharp eye

and the price of land. I came

in bondage, and I came

in freedom not worth the name.

From the high outlook

of that first day I have come

down two hundred years

across the worked and wasted

slopes, by eroding tracks

of the joyless horsepower of greed.

Through my history’s despite

and ruin, I have come

to its remainder, and here

have made the beginning

of a farm intended to become

my art of being here.

By it I would instruct

my wants: they should belong

to each other and to this place.

Until my song comes here

to learn its words, my art

is but the hope of song.

3.

All the lives this place

has had, I have. I eat

my history day by day.

Bird, butterfly, and flower

pass through the seasons of

my flesh. I dine and thrive

on offal and old stone,

and am combined within

the story of the ground.

By this earth’s life, I have

its greed and innocence,

its violence, its peace.

Now let me feed my song

upon the life that is here

that is the life that is gone.

This blood has turned to dust

and liquefied again in stem

and vein ten thousand times.

Let what is in the flesh,

O Muse, be brought to mind

A PART

To my mother, who gave me books

Stay Home

I will wait here in the fields

to see how well the rain

brings on the grass.

In the labor of the fields

longer than a man’s life

I am home. Don’t come with me.

You stay home too.

I will be standing in the woods

where the old trees

move only with the wind

and then with gravity.

In the stillness of the trees

I am at home. Don’t come with me.

You stay home too.

The Cold Pane

Between the living world

and the world of death

is a clear, cold pane;

a man who looks too close

must fog it with his breath,

or hold his breath too long.

A Meeting

In a dream I meet

my dead friend. He has,