Concentrating on those motions

That show hope most simply:

The hoe clearing the irrigation

Ditch so the water flows.

The green stalks poking up

Through the dark, Nilotic mud:

So many tongues uttering

Their joy.

Or is it our joy

They utter? Who saw Osiris

Buried, his corpse swollen

And deformed by death.

Who wept above the spot

Where he lay a long time

In the earth, listening

To the whisper of worms.

And now it is spring

And the beloved returns:

Who was fat with death

Is slender as a sapling now.

And silent grief gives way—

we shout our joy as fields

shout their green shoots.

In our despair we were dead

As the earth in winter, dark

And inert. Now the world

Is reborn. Now the poem

Of the dead one

Comes alive in our hearts.