Classic Poem

Coming home with the last load I ride standing
on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor
in hot exhaust, lank with sweat,


my arms strung
awkwardly along the hayrack, cruciform.
Almost 5OO bales we've put up


this afternoon, Marshall and I.
And of course I think of another who hung
like this on another cross. My hands are torn


by baling twine, not nails, and my side is pierced
by my ulcer, not a lance. The acid in my throat
is only hayseed. Yet exhaustion and the way


my body hangs from twisted shoulders, suspended
on two points of pain in the rising
monoxide, recall that greater suffering.


Well, I change grip and the image
fades. It's been an unlucky summer. Heavy rains
brought on the grass tremendously, a monster crop,


but wet, always wet. Haying was long delayed.
Now is our last chance to bring in
the winter's feed, and Marshall needs help.


We mow, rake, bale, and draw the bales
to the barn, these late, half-green,
improperly cured bales; some weight l5O pounds


or more, yet must be lugged by the twine
across the field, tossed on the load, and then
at the barn unloaded on the conveyor


and distributed in the loft. I help-
I, the desk-servant, word-worker-
and hold up my end pretty well too; but God,


the close of day, how I fall down then. My hands
are sore, they flinch when I light my pipe.
I think of those who have done slave labor,


less able and less well prepared than I.
Rose Marie in the rye fields of Saxony,
her father in the camps of Moldavia


and the Crimea, all clerks and housekeepers
herded to the gaunt fields of torture. Hands
too bloodied cannot bear


even the touch of air, even
the touch of love. I have a friend
whose grandmother cut cane with a machete


and cut and cut, until one day
she snicked her hand off and took it
and threw it grandly at the sky. Now


in September our New England mountains
under a clear sky for which we're thankful at last
begin to glow, maples, beeches, birches


in their first color. I look
beyond our famous hayfields to our famous hills,
to the notch where the sunset is beginning,


then in the other direction, eastward,
where a full new-risen moon like a pale
medallion hangs in a lavender cloud


beyond the barn. My eyes
sting with sweat and loveliness. And who
is the Christ now, who


if not I? It must be so. My strength
is legion. And I stand up high
on the wagon tongue in my whole bones to say


woe to you, watch out
you sons of bitches who would drive men and women
to the fields where they can only die.