I didn't know I was grateful

            for such late-autumn

                        bent-up cornfields



yellow in the after-harvest

             sun before the

                        cold plow turns it all over



into never.

            I didn't know

                        I would enter this music



that translates the world

             back into dirt fields

                         that have always called to me



as if I were a thing

              come from the dirt,

                          like a tuber,



or like a needful boy. End

             Lonely days, I believe. End the exiled

                           and unraveling strangeness.