that your death could be negligible to me now that I have seen

these pictures of your face?

Who has imagined that I would not speak familiarly with you,

or laugh with you, or visit in your house and go to work with

you in the forest?

And now one of the ideas of my place will be that you would

gladly talk and visit and work with me.

5.

I sit in the shade of the trees of the land I was born in.

As they are native I am native, and I hold to this place as

carefully as they hold to it.

I do not see the national flag flying from the staff of the

sycamore,

or any decree of the government written on the leaves of the

walnut,

nor has the elm bowed before the monuments or sworn the oath

of allegiance.

They have not declared to whom they stand in welcome.

6.

In the thought of you I imagine myself free of the weapons and

the official hates that I have borne on my back like a

hump,

and in the thought of myself I imagine you free of weapons and

official hates,

so that if we should meet we would not go by each other

looking at the ground like slaves sullen under their

burdens,

but would stand clear in the gaze of each other.

7.

There is no government so worthy as your son who fishes with

you in silence beside the forest pool.

There is no national glory so comely as your daughter whose

hands have learned a music and go their own way on the

keys.

There is no national glory so comely as my daughter who

dances and sings and is the brightness of my house.

There is no government so worthy as my son who laughs, as he

comes up the path from the river in the evening, for joy.

FARMING: A HANDBOOK

The Supplanting

When the road came, no longer bearing men,

but briars, honeysuckle, buckbush and wild grape,

the house fell to ruin, and only the old wife’s daffodils

rose in spring among the wild vines to be domestic

and to keep the faith, and her peonies drenched the tangle

with white bloom. For a while in the years of its wilderness

a wayfaring drunk slept clinched to the floor there

in the cold nights. And then I came, and set fire

to the remnants of the house and shed, and let time

hurry in the flame. I fired it so that all

would burn, and watched the blaze settle on the waste

like a shawl. I knew those old ones departed

then, and I arrived. As the fire fed, I felt rise in me

something that would not bear my name – something that

bears us

through the flame, and is lightened of us, and is glad.

Sowing

In the stilled place that once was a road going down