for Liam Powell

What I recall is this: the field flushes

Rose with the shape of a body fallen

Then shoulder-lifted as after a match

Nearly in the lightness of triumph,

And wrongly we had thought the reaping done.

Under the rick, the thresher, engine-linked,

Bound there leather-belted and stygian

A red Crichton Mill, stone-shadowed, pre-dawn.

We’d arrived in the dew-fog of morning

Clutching tin cups and watching the bogie

Engineer lighting his field-furnace, his

Portable repository of force.

Throttle-choked fire set the air quivering.

The taught bands whirred in their invisible

Velocities, and the corn-stubble lay

Stook-set, heaped for the threshing, dark to dark.

We fell to heaving, up-tossing the raw

Grain, chaff and all, into the thresher’s maw

And we relaxed in our rhythms, like men

Too long in the neighborhood of lions.

A groan split the air like a sack-seem burst,

Spilled him, an overfull wineskin howling

Himself in sick harmony with the belt

Frenzying and shrieking the air to shreds.

Our bogie killed the engine switch and huffed.

And Liam, you stood nearer him than I.

I’ve heard you tell when asked for the telling

The thresher’s wisdom, brother of the scythe.

What I recall is this: the field flushed

Rose with the shape of a body fallen

Shoulder-lifted then as after a match,

In the lightness of triumph, nearly.