What shaggy hand can grasp the tread of years
With old skill gone and fingers dry as shucks
Beneath the oxen’s hoofs?
The droughts that seek
Green valley land, the summer gale that plucks
The ash tree’s boughs and breaks their bodies down
Have forged a web of shadows in his eyes
And pressed thick knuckles in a bone-cleft cheek.
The stallion is dead. Only the geldings
Tramp high meadows with their spindling ways
Thirsting for long-dry springs.
What creaking hand
Can dam the flood of marching swing-paced days?