Michael Hamburger
Looking Back: Iowa
A decent provision of hills, enough to feed
The eye's hunger for curves: of rivers, of rocky banks,
Of lakes and of woods, enough, just, to remind a farmer
That not all is edible, far as his eye can see,
Cattle and corn are not all, with rabbit, pheasant thrown in
As a bonus from what's beyond
His acres, his ken; but when a blizzard rips
Branches from sound oaks not his world alone
Is exposed: an opossum, uneaten, lies
Dead under snow. And above all, before and after
Blizzard, hard frost, that sky.
Larger, more generous even than land's extent
And luminous now, in November,
As I rise to it, leaving the ribbed fields.
poetrymagazines' note: Reproduced with kind permission of the Michael Hamburger Trust.
Page(s) 163
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