Malcolm Cowley

From “Three Portraits”

HE had been happy thinking she might love him,

And whistled at his plowing all the day;

But now, while dancers stamped and scraped above him,

On the barn floor, he lay below in silence

Among the cattle on a pile of hay.

He had dressed quickly when his work was over,

And watched the guests stroll towards him up the lane;

But she came smiling with another lover:

Hurt and ashamed, he stole off from the dancers,

Like a whipped dog, to blubber out his pain.

He breathed more calmly, hearing the insistence

Of horses munching fodder; and he grew

Indifferent to the fiddles in the distance,

To womankind and to his disappointment,

Down here among the cattle that he knew.