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After Harvest
It breaks within the sun-worn heads of men
Who smell their death in cattle dung to hear
The cock’s mad crow at dusk as mocking them.
They stiffen in the dead part of their year.
It tightens in their raw-boned chests like dust
Or silt, and tastes like the round, soured brows
Of their good wives, their well’s rich mossy rust.
It looks like their best friend, as each one knows.
And if they speak of it at all, they’ll say
It’s just some sharpened pain that comes and goes,
A finger lost to some blunt saw, a day
They have forgotten, a worn-out pair of shoes.
But then tradition makes them form a ring,
And drink. And like the silent earth, they sing.
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