Song after the harvest
Here dances Fridolin,
on sweet wine he is drunk but serene,
on his fields’ yield of grain, berries’
juice like champagne,
and the tune of a waltz wild and keen.
See, with tight-fitting frock coat and
tails on his arm,
how he dances each girl at the ball so
warm,
till she leans – like a poppy whose
drooping stem wanes –
on his breast, tired and blissfully calm.
Here dances Fridolin,
and the wine makes his memory keen –
here his father and forebears found solace
so strong
in the fiddle’s high-droning careen.
But you sleep now, old ancestors, on such a
night,
and the hand that made strings sing is no
longer light,
and your lives and your times are a
murmuring song
in which sighing and joy both take flight.
But here dances Fridolin!
See your son, he is strong, lithe and lean,
and with farmers speaks plainly the
language they know,
but with learnèd folk Latin’s routine.
Through your new land’s bright gold does
his scythe sweep apace,
and his joy is as yours if his barn should
lack space,
and his lass he lifts high, like his kin
long ago,
toward the harvest moon’s red saucepan
face.
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