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From “To the River Beach”
RED berries are on the bent stalks: these turn to the sky | |
| That might be a pond of water. Geese come all day | |
| In long squadrons which make no shadow, to the wild grass. | |
| Silver-poplar leaf foxing in the frozen stalks, | |
| A white blaze in this old garden, what poplar grove | 5 |
| Was that where the three women worked baking bread?— | |
| Where they began at morning, by their fire under the wet boughs | |
And laid the loaves in the sun?
So one of these women came | |
| From the bread-board, and a little into the grass, | |
| And braided her dark hair again with cold hands. | 10 |
| One came loaded with dead wood close to the fire | |
| And leaned, pulling her dress tight at the breast, to warm. | |
| One was laying out loaves—two women at the fire. | |
| I saw between them the leaves start along the wind’s lane, | |
| And heard leaves like spray on the white trees, and saw the stems, | 15 |
| And low branches, which break in winter, bend and draw down. | |
| Boughs drew between our eyes and the fire, eldest daughter, | |
| That the blaze blew apart like leaves. She said: “Wind again, | |
| To chill us, and to shake leaf-water over our bread. | |
| This is our third month: and what have we to show | 20 |
| When the men brag that they have cleared so much ground? | |
| The bread even tastes bitter of the poplar stems | |
| That blow wild; look, this is spray from the river | |
| On my hands and hair; the fire is blown out. | |
| I am tired of cold and wind, and wild geese, and this field, | 25 |
| And of trimming fire and hair to suit the wind.” | |
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| And said: “We’ll have a house, and pleasure, when the grain’s in, | |
| And when all this has lost me the use of my pride.” | |
| And like river waves, heavy across the frozen beach, | |
| The hair was heavy which her hands lifted; and her mouth | 30 |
| Had no color; and there was spray upon her face. | |
| By now surely that woman is either old— | |
| Or dead, more likely. Yet in pity of her pride | |
| The mind stirs uneasy, as if she this day | |
| Stood by the field’s edge braiding her hair, and gazed | 35 |
| At the fire in wind, under wet poplar boughs. | |
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