The sunflower droops
To the lazy wave; the wind sleeps;
Then, moving in dazzling links and loops,
A marvel of shadow and shine,
A glory of olive and amber and wine,
Runs the color in the wheat.
When the wild winds rumbled past you in the fall fields
and you blessed them, you surrendered
to splendor, when you lifted up your ruins on the old road
remember the seasons
when the wind was new, when your hands
were good fire in the hands of travelers,
A land of plenty, where
Toward the sun, as hasting there,
The colors run
Before the wind's feet
in the wheat.
Wind, as it sings you; kneel there,
So faint and far it seems the drone
Of bee or beetle, seems to come
as you must have done, in your first
world, when the wind
A cloud flies there—
A swirl
In the hollows like the twinkling feet
Of a fairy waltzer; the colors run
To the westward sun,
Through the deeps of the ripening wheat
was wind, when your ruin
was a music—you
who were no one, once, and colder,
and were open so wholly to the brokenness
that you sang to whatever left you empty
like the cello in the cello maker’s hands.