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From “Primapara”
A SLOW spring between two wheat-fields. High on the hill | |
| In the straight weeds the men walk sizing the wheat, | |
| Sweating through dry soft ground where wild sunflowers are. | |
| The wind blows dust in the faces of these old men, | |
| And dust is all over their faces as they ride down, | 5 |
| As they ride toward the poplars about the distant house. | |
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| Do I not know? They will watch the green willows between | |
| These very fields; rest a day or two, mend roads | |
| Against the harvesting of this high grain; and sleep. | |
| The old men have seen it and are content with it, | 10 |
| Content among the women, and all content— | |
| Women who lie uneasy at night against them. | |
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| I know of this, and of the mouth of music which said, | |
| “A small spring between the wheat-fields.” I know the low hair | |
| And the beauty in which music is, as slow rain | 15 |
| Is in the willows when they dip over like hands. | |
| I know her of whom you are proud, that before their sleep | |
| They also behold her proudly—a distant spring’s beauty. | |
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| Is this the distant spring’s beauty? For in the rain | |
| It shall all be changed, and the willows about it be darkened. | 20 |
| The old men have put the hills in foal; yet past | |
| Sundown, and until the morning the headed wheat | |
| Finds me, and I feel her mouth and low hair. | |
| Cry for their pride in her, when you lie by them at night! | |
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