Good harvest
And it grew holy, the darkish earth.
Through these our hands that did well
receive it
and bade it sing ere they had to leave it,
and bade them bless every seed from birth.
And it was meagre and it was grey,
yet gave the corn a fine song for singing
and let the bursting grains hang there
swinging
like golden rods that in fields did sway.
The fields of plenty, the sheaves of corn
A rhythm grew, arching now for ever
a sky between earth and hands’ endeavour.
And up above a new star was born.
Each stem that eared shall by us be blessed
The gentle crop we shall now make ready
so we can meet ourselves calm and steady,
our hands secure and our minds at rest.
3 comments:
beautiful ... I have this blog on the "list" at my blog, and I read every one of your posts. Your archive is rich in great poems. The note above "About Me" invites your readers to suggest "a particular poem"— I looked in your archive for poems by Jan Kuijper, but didn't find any— You have such extraordinary technical skills in versification, surely you could render some of Kuijper's sonnets with expertise— In any case, thank you for whatever you choose to write—
i dredged the hard disk and found one translation of jan kuijper, but am not at all satisfied with it. i'll bear what you say in mind and see if i can come up with something.
Well harvested!
Post a Comment