The harvest was over. Even the scythe had not been mine. I had nowhere to go.

In the evening I found a girl lying on the ground like a sheaf of wheat, radiant and silent. When I bent over her she was watching me, smiling.

They say the sun will come back
at midnight
after all
my one love

Two boards with a token roof, backed
Against the shelving hill, and a curtain
Of frayed sacking which the wind absently

These junipers growing out from the yellow rocks
   now in the sunlight near the top of the steep slope
under its split cliff face and these dwarf oaks returning

You with a muse of your own
in the old gallery
that profile of grave beauty

But there is only one of you
they say as though they knew
and it may even be true

The sun was touching the wet black shoulders of olives
in a chipped dish descended from another century
on that day I remember more than half my life ago

You who waited here before me
in silence mothers of silence
I always knew you were present

You have been evoked so often
like some relative in office
whom we have heard of by name

Look at you bringing 
Your children up just as formerly 
And look at me back again