In Sixty-two, it was shaggy with wilderness still For stretches and stretches of close-packed undergrowth, Wild as a muskrat, ignorant of the axe; Stretches and stretches where roughly-chinked log-cabins, Two shouts and a holler away from the nearest neighbors, Stood in a wisp of open. All night long The cabin-people heard the chant of the trees, The forest, hewn away from the painful clearing For a day or a year, with sweat and back-breaking toil, But waiting to come back, to crush the crude house And the planted space with vines and trailers of green, To quench the fire on the hearth with running green saps, With a chant of green, with tiny green tendrils curling, —This is Ellyat’s tune, this is no tune but his⁠— The railway-train goes by with a shrill, proud scream And the woman comes to the door in a butternut dress Hair tousled up in a knot on the back of her head, A barefoot child at her skirt. The train goes by.