I WATCHED the agony of a mountain farm, a gangrenous decay; the farm died with the pines that sheltered it the farm died when the woodshed rotted away. It died to the beat of a loose board on the barn that flapped in the wind all night; nobody thought to drive a nail in it. The farm died in a broken window light, a broken pane upstairs in the double bedroom through which the autumn rain beat down all night on the mouldy turkey carpet; nobody thought to putty another pane. Nobody thought to nail a slat on the corncrib nobody mowed the hay nobody came to mend the rotting fences. The farm died when the two boys went away, or maybe lived till the lone old man was buried but after it was dead I loved it more though poison sumac grew in the empty pastures, though ridgepoles fell and though the fall winds whistled all the night through an open and empty door. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BROTHER AND SISTER by MARY ANN EVANS HARVEST MOON: 1914 by JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY ODES: BOOK 2: ODE 12. ON RECOVERING FROM A FIT OF SICKNESS IN COUNTRY by MARK AKENSIDE ADON by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON DOVE NOTES by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON QUAIL AND THRUSH by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON GOING CROSSLOTS IN VERMONT by DANIEL LEAVENS CADY |