COUNTRY CHILD

Dropped without joy from the gaunt womb he lies,
Maturing in his place against his parents' ageing;
The slow scene unfolds before his luckless eye
To the puckered window, where the cold storm's raging
Curtains the world, and the grey curlew cries,
Uttering a grief too sharp for the breast's assuaging.

So the days will drift into months and the months to years,
Moulding his mouth to silence, his hand to the plough;
And the world will grow to a few lean acres of grass,
And an orchard of stars in the night's unscaleable boughs.
But see at the bare field's edge, where he'll surely pass,
An ash-tree wantons with sensuous body and smooth,
Provocative limbs to play the whore to his youth,
Till hurled with hot haste into manhood he woos and weds
A wife half wild, half shy of the ancestral bed,
The crumbling house, and the whisperers on the stairs.