The Iowa Review
Volume 16
Issue 2 Spring-Summer
1986
Gathering Hay
Gregory Djanikian
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Djanikian, Gregory. "Gathering Hay." The Iowa Review 16.2 (1986): 116-117. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol16/iss2/22
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Article 22
Five Poems Gregory Djanikian
Hay
Gathering
Vermont,
a
Under
blue,
sky munificently
the
last
of
the
windrowed
pack
Into bundles,
fork and heave them
We
Onto
Two
1982
hay
skyward
the pick-up
and its unsteady pile.
acres in five hours. Seven loads.
a
I'd
half-day's work,
though
at
we
it. Back
the barn,
Dispute
pitch
The hay up to the loft where
already
A mountain
of it has risen
By
some,
our
Through
doings. Or rather, yours.
an
art
I have not mastered,
This is
Has taken me twice the time to do
The half you've done, though I achewell
By
any measure,
enough
to wonder
By what faith or will did the first
To
settle here endure ?Andersons,
MacKensies,
scythe and pitchfork
only
Heralded
the winter
in, survived, begat,
And made a life out of the stubborn land
Browns?who
with
a
They're buried in. It is
thought
on
a
I can't hold
here
to, whispering
And not quite here, before it passes.
For want
of something
better,
I say,
"This last load killed my back,"
Thankful I lasted long enough to have
ache I do, the sweet complaint.
But later, as we sit on your porch
the house behind
Facing townward,
The
us,
The stubbly field behind that, thick
for your horse to graze
Enough
You
"It feels good
say quietly,
on,
116
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To
have my
Just
What
that,
hay
in for the winter,"
though your eyes betray
and hidden.
you keep to yourself
It's the old story of time and weather,
can cure a thirst
too much water
How
its wants,
how some this summer
Beyond
Have
lost their first crop to the rain,
some will
How
the cut hay
lose the second,
and fungal in the sodden fields,
Rotting
some may lose both,
How
the farm, themselves.
You've
timed this harvest right. Had luck.
to go on for another season.
Enough
at least, to make you say,
Enough,
in time undo
ruin will
Though
It is enough
"It feels good."
To sit beside you
And
hear you
Agami
us,
say it.
Beach
Alexandria,
1955
There were the black flags flying
All along the beach andwe knew
We
could
not
swim.
There
was
too dark and churlish
Turning
And there was someone wading
Too
Half
There
Under
the sea
in
far and standing for a moment
in air, half in water.
was
the sand shifting easily
his heels and the current
him out and out.
Sweeping
were
There
the cabanas and the sound
Of my sister crying and my feet
as I ran toward them
Were
burning
But there was my father moving
already
117