Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CORN, by RUTH LECHLITNER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CORN, by                    
First Line: Here at our side
Last Line: Let us walk softly . . . Softly.
Subject(s): Corn; Fields; Graves; Pastures; Meadows; Leas; Tombs; Tombstones


Here at our side
Corn flows, row upon row
Beneath the white light of the moon.
Ribbons of supple silver and green shadow
Ripple with soft, warm rhythm
Under a wind
Flesh-sweet with summer.

Between wide fields
Lie the great dusky trees,
Their purple boughs
Heavy with night silence,
And the pale sky like water shines beyond them.

There is a place of quiet in the curve
Of sleeping hills:
In the cool dark,
In the dim scent of clover,
Are broken stones
Marking forgotten graves.
Old willows make a ghostly mist above them,
And over the grass
Spread shadows like great wings.

Forgotten death . . . so near,
Near this straight, strong magnificence
Of growing corn:
Out of old graves the hidden sweet of bread,
Out of old dreams the nourishment to hunger,
Out of hushed life the old, inaudible rhythm --
Corn for brown hands,
Corn for ruddy hearts,
Corn for new love. . . .

Dear one, we walk tonight
Hand in warm hand,
Over the miracle of yielding earth.
The invisible pulse of music is about us,
The cool white moon lays loveliness upon us,
There is the whisper of young heart to heart --
(Spare now no tears for death -- that is forgotten . . .)
Here is new life, -- the lush, great growth of it:
Gold reaching to the stars.

While dreams seal our lips,
The corn leaves sing
A poem of prairie nights:
And they who sleep in the quiet of the hills,
In the cool dark, may listen too . . .
And know.

Let us walk softly . . . softly.





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