Keeping hope in the field of next year's harvest, he does not love what she is, but what he thinks she should become. His present is the driest drought, his love a green mirage whose precincts he plots out with a calendar of crops and flowers suitable for the season he imagines, being her benevolent despot. She, meanwhile, unaware of flax and barley rowed across her breast, lies unhoed, unsown. Counting sheaves, pretending they're her own harvest, she garners in catastrophe from the fields of his accomplishment. Waking to a dust bowl of unsprouted dreams, he finds her barren and love spent. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...VARIATIONS: 12 by CONRAD AIKEN CONTRA MORTEM: THE NOTHING I by HAYDEN CARRUTH CONTRA MORTEM: THE SUN by HAYDEN CARRUTH NORTH WINTER by HAYDEN CARRUTH BIRTHDAY POEM FOR THOMAS HARDY by CECIL DAY LEWIS THE TOURNAMENT by SIDNEY LANIER BOOTH'S PHILIPPI by EDGAR LEE MASTERS MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM MARION REEDY by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |