Louise Glück

A cool wind blows on summer evenings, stirring the wheat.

The wheat bends, the leaves of the peach trees

rustle in the night ahead.

In the dark, a boy’s crossing the field:

for the first time, he’s touched a girl

so he walks home a man, with a man’s hungers.

Slowly the fruit ripens—

baskets and baskets from a single tree

so some rots every year

and for a few weeks there’s too much:

before and after, nothing.

Between the rows of wheat

you can see the mice, flashing and scurrying

across the earth, though the wheat towers above them,

churning as the summer wind blows.

The moon is full. A strange sound

comes from the field—maybe the wind.

But for the mice it’s a night like any summer night.

Fruit and grain: a time of abundance.

Nobody dies, nobody goes hungry.

No sound except the roar of the wheat.

My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer
I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar,
like what I remember of love when I was young—

love that was so often foolish in its objectives
but never in its choices, its intensities.
Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised—

My soul has been so fearful, so violent:
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,

not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:

it is not the earth I will miss,
it is you I will miss.

All winter he sleeps.

Then he gets up, he shaves –

it takes a long time to become a man again

his face in the mirror bristles with dark hair.

The earth now is like a woman, waiting for him.

A great hopefulness – that’s what binds them together,

himself and this woman.

Now he has to work all day to prove he deserves what he has.

Midday: he’s tired, he’s thirsty.

But if he quits now he’ll have nothing.

The sweat covering his back and arms

is like his life pouring out of him

with nothing replacing it.

He works like an animal, then

like a machine, with no feeling.

But the bond will never break

though the earth fights back now, wild in the summer heat –

He squats down, letting the dirt run through his fingers.

The sun goes down, the dark comes.

Now that summer’s over, the earth is hard, cold;

by the road, a few isolated fires burn.

Nothing remains of love,

only estrangement and hatred.

Like a child, the earth’s going to sleep,

or so the story goes.

But I’m not tired, it says.

And the mother says, You may not be tired but I’m tired—

You can see it in her face, everyone can.

So the snow has to fall, sleep has to come.

Because the mother’s sick to death of her life

and needs silence.

It’s very dark today; through the rain,

the mountain isn’t visible. The only sound

is rain, driving life underground.

And with the rain, cold comes.

There will be no moon tonight, no stars.

The wind rose at night;

all morning it lashed against the wheat –

at noon it ended. But the storm went on,

soaking the dry fields, then flooding them –

The earth has vanished.

There’s nothing to see, only the rain

gleaming against the dark windows.

This is the resting place, where nothing moves –

Now we return to what we were,

animals living in darkness

without language or vision –

Nothing proves I’m alive.

There is only the rain, the rain is endless.