Fruits Of A First-World Appellation: A Tribute To Heaney And Stevens Poem by Nathaniel A.Wallace

Causality invited me casually
To meet the man, but I have no interest
In being made; he chuckled, and asked if I,
Not everywhere, perceiving triumvirates of old,
Understood farming? And yes, making the most
Bang for your shock, explaining the way:
Lethargic and delirious, in the haze
Their backs were sent to parse the heat
Of the roasting sun. The skin of their neck,
Frayed and decimated, like smoke, left
The tell-tale mark of a hedonistic flagellator,
An unrelenting guise, belying sounding,
On the prospects of nature, dismayed
At lack of Blue or Black, or Rasp -berry
Picking. A Green or Rainbow freedom,
Compounded by anesthetic touch, is left
In the eye of the beholder; only trees' leaves
Caterpillars, birds' feathers, can cut swaths
Across scintillating fields of broken silence.
Why, trudging on through crops of sandy soil is,
Like when work is said - in medias res - it means
'I'd rather die than starve.' Affectedly,
That's what the farmer told me; the farmer
Sitting on his lonely bench counting lines, with dry
Straw in his hat, a pipe in his beard, pumping stories
More disturbing to my ear than magic. It was
Clear, to the extent that it was said, that symbolism
Is a thing in the minds of man. Their labour,
Flowing with the pressure from the caskets, was
Steeped as one in centuries of nameless vintage.