“He isn’t dead. I know that he isn’t dead. Maybe they’ve changed his body into a tree, Maybe they’ve changed his body into a cloud Or something that sleeps through the Winter. But I’ll remember. I’ll sleep through the Winter, too. We all sleep then And when the Spring freshet drums in the narrow brooks And fills them with a fresh water, they’ll let him come Out of the cloud and the tree and the Winter-sleep.

The Winter falls and we lie like beleaguered stones In the black, cramped ground. And then you wake in the morning And the air’s got soft and you plant the narrow-edged seeds, They grow all Summer and now we’ve put them in barns To sleep again for a while.

I am the seed and the husk. I have sown and reaped. My heart is a barn full of grain that my work has harvested. My body holds the ripe grain. I can wait my time.”