A bird that I don't know,
Hunched on his light-pole like a scarecrow,
Looks sideways out into the
The wind waves under the waves of heat.
The field is yellow as egg-bread
Except where (just as though they'd
It live for looks) a locust
In leaf-green and shade-violet,
A standing mercy.
The bird calls twice, "Red clay, red clay";
Or else he's saying, "Directly, directly."If someone came by I could ask,
Around here all of them must know —And why they live so and die so —Or why, for once, the lagging
Flaps from the little creek's parched
Across the harsh-grassed, gullied
To the black, rowed evergreens below.
They know and they don't know.
To ask, a man must be a stranger —And asking, much more answering, is dangerous;
Asked about it, who would not
Of all he ever did and never meant,
And think a life and its distresses,
Its random, clutched-for, homefelt blisses,
The circumstances of an accident?
The farthest farmer in a field,
A gaunt plant grown, for seed, by farmers,
Has felt a longing, lorn
Jailed in his breast; and, just as I,
Has grunted, in his old perplexity,
A standing plea.
From the tar of the blazing
The eyes shift, in their
And unavowing, unavailable sorrow.
Yet the intonation of a name
Some secrets that they never
To let out to a soul; and what words would not
The bowed and weathered heads above the
Or the once-too-often washed wash dresses?
They are subdued to their own element.
One
The red, clay
Is lowered to the naked clay;
After some words, the body is
The shadows lengthen, and a dreaming
Breathes, from the vague mound,
Life;
From the grove under the
Stars shine, and a wandering
Is kindled for the mourner, man.
The angel kneeling with the
Sees, in the moonlight, graves.
