Wrought by the odd desire for permanence
I’d hammer down that barn’s boards one by one
The ivy’s nudged apart and winds have sprung
And icy blows and summer’s pounding suns.
Those gaping windows, too, and half-cracked panes,
The door that broke from its hinges leans against
The blackened exit mouth, and all such things
As let the rude rot in and thieving rain
I’d be so prompt to take defense against
And fortify and make so sound
You’d think it’d haunt me on some howling night
When all seems waste unless I could
To all that trouble say: this much will stand,
This swallow’s empire for a little while
And bolts of hay in their warm cave
And drifts of straw upon the broad-beamed floor.
Though time must turn all waters for its mill
And nothing is but grist as we well know,
What has withstood two hundred years
That rich resistance will do so
If obdurate work allows, for fifty more
For fifty more to house the hay
They cut and pile in striped rows
And will carry in before the sun’s flower goes.
As if within this shelter here
That passionate workmanship has made
For what the toppling wagons bring
From ricks in fields to fill the loft
With rustling fragrance and with warmth
There might be some more delicate thing
Dozing as in some attic in some spring
That shafts in through the windows in a dream
Of meadows in their prime unreaped, uncut,
Unreaped, uncut, and running with the wind-
The golden burn, the darksome gold or green.
Pressed to the rafters all that airy weight
And caught within, now looking out,
Past time’s compulsions in the massy dark,
Their golden heads and stalks of light.
I mean those summers of the foursquare fields
That memory by its strange persuasion yields,
All blazoning, from dim abandonment.
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