PART TWO

Leaves of Grass

BARELY CULTIVABLE

GRASSLANDS

“Why then do you venture in a place where none but the strong should come?” he demanded. “Did you not know that when you crossed the big river you left a friend behind you . . . ?”

Of whom do you speak?”

“The law . . .”

—JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, The Prairie(New York, n.d.), p.32

The days of man are but as grass, for he flourisheth as a flower of the field. For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.

—PSALM103:15–16