| |
From “Red Earth”
I’VE seen her pass with eyes upon the road— | |
| An old bent woman in a bronze black shawl, | |
| With skin as dried and wrinkled as a mummy’s, | |
| As brown as a cigar-box, and her voice | |
| Like the low vibrant strings of a guitar. | 5 |
| And I have fancied from the girls about | |
| What she was at their age, what they will be | |
| When they are old as she. But now she sits | |
| And smokes away each night till dawn comes round, | |
| Thinking, beside the piñons’ flame, of days | 10 |
| Long past and gone, when she was young—content | |
| To be no longer young, her epic done: | |
| |
| For a woman has work and much to do, | |
| And it’s good at the last to know it’s through, | |
| And still have time to sit alone, | 15 |
| To have some time you can call your own. | |
| It’s good at the last to know your mind | |
| And travel the paths that you traveled blind, | |
| To see each turn and even make | |
| Trips in the byways you did not take— | 20 |
| But that, por Dios, is over and done, | |
| It’s pleasanter now in the way we’ve come; | |
| It’s good to smoke and none to say | |
| What’s to be done on the coming day, | |
| No mouths to feed or coat to mend, | 25 |
| And none to call till the last long end. | |
| Though one have sons and friends of one’s own, | |
| It’s better at last to live alone. | |
| For a man must think of food to buy, | |
| And a woman’s thoughts may be wild and high; | 30 |
| But when she is young she must curb her pride, | |
| And her heart is tamed for the child at her side. | |
| But when she is old her thoughts may go | |
| Wherever they will, and none to know. | |
| And night is the time to think and dream, | 35 |
| And not to get up with the dawn’s first gleam; | |
| Night is the time to laugh or weep, | |
| And when dawn comes it is time to sleep … | |
| |
| When it’s all over and there’s none to care, | |
| I mean to be like her and take my share | 40 |
| Of comfort when the long day’s done, | |
| And smoke away the nights, and see the sun | |
| Far off, a shrivelled orange in a sky gone black, | |
| Through eyes that open inward and look back. | |
| |
