Classic Poem

I break my bread. There are the great gold fields
And there the men move with the swaying scythes,
Their wet clothes modelled to their thick slow limbs
Leaving behind them a straight shining path
Where the boys work with knots of stooping women
Binding the sheaves and piling them in place
Like praying hands beneath the summer sky.
Horses unharnessed stand beside their carts
Stamping the flies: a dog lies fast asleep
In hedgerow shadows: now and then a voice
Comes from the gleaners, wells up, murmurs, flows
Into the eddying silence, while above
Silently, slowly, the great clouds are piled
In pale straw-colored mows against the blue.