A bird that I don't know, 
Hunched on his light-pole like a scarecrow, 
Looks sideways out into the wheat 
The wind waves under the waves of heat.
The field is yellow as egg-bread dough 
Except where (just as though they'd let 
It live for looks) a locust billows 
In leaf-green and shade-violet, 
A standing mercy. 
The bird calls twice, "Red clay, red clay"; 
Or else he's saying, "Directly, directly." 
If someone came by I could ask, 
Around here all of them must know—
And why they live so and die so— 
Or why, for once, the lagging heron 
Flaps from the little creek's parched cresses 
Across the harsh-grassed, gullied meadow 
To the black, rowed evergreens below. 

They know and they don't know. 
To ask, a man must be a stranger—
And asking, much more answering, is dangerous; 
Asked about it, who would not repent 
Of all he ever did and never meant, 
And think a life and its distresses, 
Its random, clutched-for, homefelt blisses, 
The circumstances of an accident? 
The farthest farmer in a field, 
A gaunt plant grown, for seed, by farmers, 
Has felt a longing, lorn urbanity 
Jailed in his breast; and, just as I, 
Has grunted, in his old perplexity, 
A standing plea. 

From the tar of the blazing square 
The eyes shift, in their taciturn 
And unavowing, unavailable sorrow. 
Yet the intonation of a name confesses 
Some secrets that they never meant 
To let out to a soul; and what words would not dim 
The bowed and weathered heads above the denim 
Or the once-too-often washed wash dresses? 

They are subdued to their own element. 
One day 
The red, clay face 
Is lowered to the naked clay; 
After some words, the body is forsaken…. 
The shadows lengthen, and a dreaming hope 
Breathes, from the vague mound, Life; 
From the grove under the spire 
Stars shine, and a wandering light 
Is kindled for the mourner, man. 
The angel kneeling with the wreath 
Sees, in the moonlight, graves.