Geryon
Geryon sits in the garden that is red in the middle of it
The whole island is red: red Cattle red Dust red Dog red Geryon
And the red sun is always setting when you live in the red West
Today it will be stormy thinks Geryon and each of his three heads
Counts a red third of the grazing herd. He thinks: Heracles
I see your greedy eye licking up the distances between us
Like a red calf Like his red rasping tongue
Today the salt hills between your island and mine
Are green glass shot with light and storm. No need to come No
Need to risk the sea for a visit. The cattle are doing just fine
And Red Dog he is happy with his two heads at home
Gardening
There are those who say she ate the seeds
(whether out of hunger or desire they can’t agree)
and spurned the light: fields gone hoary white
with her mother’s raging. Grain rotting in the rain.
Her brothers listless on the farm, throwing slop to pigs
unable or unwilling to understand.
But I can see her now
down below the lake beneath its ice:
seven tiny eyes blinking in the small night of her fist
as she secrets them the length of corridors
dodging the albino faces
the secrets that part the lips of the dead
to die as bubbles do upon the surface
of that uneven night.
To the bank of the stream
where pale-eyed minnows ghost the shallows
the slow and viscous rapids
the foamless, glass-like falls.
Speaking one letter of her mother’s name
for each seed she drops into the soil
she makes for herself a garden there:
the unlikeliest of lies to spring a trap for light.
And half the year she’ll tend this crop
that love has bidden her to sow –
for only she knows how her thoughts spread out
like the sound of two stones
knocking together underwater.
Agricola Noster
after Jen Hadfield
Our farmer, who art come upon thy quad,
Hallowed by thy sacks of sweet crushed grain.
Thy feedtruck come, thy tractor bring us bedstraw,
Let the watercart fill in the emptiness of our trough.
May it be done in thy field as in the pastures of the Lord.
Forgive us the dull bovine hollows of our stares
(for the stubborn stupidity of a beast
is the stupidity of the maker of beasts)
And we will forgive you all that brings us pain:
The electric prod, the branding iron
The squeeze shoot and castration blade.
Lead us not away from sweet forage in the summer
And deliver us unto thy swaths for grazing come the fall.
Deliver us from barbed wire.
Deliver us from cold rain.
Agricola Noster, protector of us cows,
Hallowed be thy sacks of sweet crushed grain.
The Kingdom of Fowl
An angel appeared to the farmer’s daughter from on top of the barn
and she beheld the kingdom of fowl in all its glory
Holy farmer’s daughter, who comes with mash and corn
blessed be thy soft milk arms.
Kindest art thou among the wingless
and delicious are the contents of thy pail.
Holy daughter, mother of our excitements
cluck with us now and at the hour of our laying.
And the Word became as round as the world inside an egg
and was laid with a great chorus amongst the hens
Holy farmer’s daughter, bearing thy basket of ascent
blessed be thy gentle groping hands.
Kindest art thou among the wingless
for thou hast felt the heat beneath our brooding.
Thou knowest the travails of a hen
cluck with us now and at the hour of our laying.
Behold the daughter of the farmer cometh with an axe
be it done to old hens according to thy will
Holy farmer’s daughter, how sharp that glint-beak in thy hand
gentle be the thoughts you turn on hens too old to lay
for we believe thou art kindest of those without wings.
Stretch forth gently our softly feathered necks
and deliver us from our confusions
cluck with us now and at the hour of our death.
Lullaby (or, Nighttime outside the gates to the garden)
sleep now my child, to sleep
for in darkness your mother has come
in from the fields and furrows
though the work of the day is not done
seedtime and harvest
sickle and plough
eating and drinking
by the sweat of thy brow
pity the ones who in loving
confusing the love that they saw
reached and plucked and ate the fruit
and asked too much of God
seedtime and harvest
sickle and plough
eating and drinking
by the sweat of thy brow
