Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FAR BUGLES, by OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FAR BUGLES, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The mountain road bent round a cliff
Last Line: Taking, and leaving, the old, imponderable load.
Alternate Author Name(s): Burke, Fielding
Subject(s): Life; Love - Marital; Old Age; Wedded Love; Marriage - Love


The mountain road bent round a cliff,
And there I found him, motionless.
Ferns touched his knee; wild columbine climbed higher;
And from the moist, green ledge above his head
A bunch of water-berries trembled
As if to reach and crown him.
I hailed him, for his gifts to me
Were warm as youth and friendship; but his eyes
Dropped dull as falling birds. I lingered,
Trying to put their light back,
And speech at last rushed at me,
A voluble wind.

"I'm up and out by daylight now,
But not to be ahead o' the sun
On Katterhay Knob. I've got to plough.
No end at all to the rows and rows.
I've hardly a minute to look at the crows.
Once when I heard a redbird call
I made my hands like a whistling cup,
And blew and called just like he sings,
Then stood to watch him skewin' up
With the sun a-bubblin' on his wings;
But old man Gow he rumbled along
And asked if I wasn't hurtin' the ground
Ploughin' so mighty strong.
And he reckoned I'd have enough to pay
The doctor against the baby come
If I cut along at a row a day.
Then something more 'bout folks being clutter,
And if my wife was as lazy at home
We'd better move up to the poah-farm now,
And he'd get a man whose hands wa'an't butter
When they took aholt of a plough."

He paused and drew a breath long, sharp and thin,
That cut his thought in moody halves;
Then speech came slower, a little weighed
With tagging memories; with half-born hopes,
And wonders bright and wingless,
Dying before they left his heart.

"And Emmie, I don't know her now.
She works and sews,
As busy as me in the long field-rows.
Of mornings before I go,
She gets the breakfast and milks the cow,
Then hurries to sweep and make the bed,
So she can sit and sew.
Her hair is tight around her head,
In crinkled ropes, 'cause her mother grinned
And hinted and sniffed till she had it pinned;
And I wish she never had come about;
For Emmie's hair when she let it fly
Made me think o' the yellow rye
When a July storm comes quick and the wind
Blows it backward up the hill.
It's queer to see it smooth and still,
Tho' it's shiny yet as a sleepy trout.
She says it's got to be out o' the way,
With so much to do and more ahead,
And a lookin' glass won't earn our bread.
When I hurry in at the end of a day
She hands me the bucket and I start for the spring,
And I'm not more than half way back,
Thinkin' I'll clear my throat and sing,
When she calls to know if the mare's been fed,
And there's wood to get, and the fodder's to pack
Out o' that leaky shed --
And when at last I get to a chair
I don't believe she knows I am there.
She flies about like a little gold bee,
Till there's twenty women around the stove,
And strangers all to me.

"But when she's asleep she's the Emmie I love;
Paler a lot than she used to be;
Her hair all down and trembling bright
In the moonlight dropped like a wispy cloth
Through the window on her; it don't seem right
For me to look, no more 'n a thief.
Her eyelids are soft as a white, shut moth;
I know if I touched 'em they'd feel like silk;
But I wouldn't wake her, no, I'd as lief
Hit her almost. In sleep, they say
She's making the baby's milk.
And I'm too tired to watch for long,
So I turn my face away from the moon,
And shut my eyes and think of the song
I made for her on Katterhay,
And sleep, and dream we'll be married soon."

The light was there now, in his eyes,
Like gathered, golden blades.
Above him, in a gust, the berries swayed,
Red as his vivid lips; and from a heart
Too full to close its doors, his voice pitched out,
Leaving the air a passion.

Girl I love, girl I love,
Do not stand by the water!
A stranger may break
The stem of your body
And set in his nosegay
Your head honey-colored.
Girl I love, girl I love,
Do not stand in the meadow!
You may fall to the stream,
And how shall I find you
And know which is mine
Among the floating lilies?

The berries trembled downward to his hair,
As if an elf hand bent them. I thought the stream,
Babbling a ritournelle, reached for his feet;
But he was still.
"She liked the song, Karl?"

"Ay, she liked it well.
And all that fluttering day,
If I just touched her, she was like a bell
About to ring; but not a thing she'd say;
Not even that she loved me; but each time she took
My hand 'twas like she laid
A birdie in it, warm and not afraid;
And my heart was like a windy tree
Full of little leaves. Right now I see,
With my eyes shut, each turn and crook
In the trail that day; and I want to die
When I can't remember every step we made.
But I reckon Emmie has forgot.
This morning she lay asleep, with the sky
All pink about her. It wouldn't be wrong
To make her dream of me, I thought;
And with half my breath I sang the song.
Just a whisper it was; but up she flew
With 'My, it's late, and what's to do!
You ought 'a' been out 'fore good daybreak!"
A shifless daddy she's sure I'd make.
The dear little thing would starve, she knew!

"When I got to the field I couldn't think.
My heart was hot and burning black.
'Way up in the brush I heard the bleat
Of a little lost lamb, and I didn't go
To put it right. When I saw the pink
Of sarvice buds at the end of a row
I felt they were blooming wild and sweet
In a world I didn't know.
I thought o' the woods where I used to track;
Moonfeather falls, and the leaning ash;
The three blue springs where the raccoons drink;
The long, slim lake like a painted sash
Dropped from the sky for the woods to wear;
And I reckoned how if I went back
That they wouldn't know I was there.

"At noon when I stopped to feed the mare
I didn't go in to eat.
I knew that you'd be climbin' up,
And you always stop by the Drippin' Shelf,
To watch it, just as I do myself;
So I waited here to ask you why
Life's got to be nothing but work and sup,
However I turn or try.
Why the sun that shouted 'Karl, let's go,'
Drags like a coal across the sky,
As tired as me and achin' slow;
And the wood is only a shut, green door,
And every day is just one more.
I thought I'd ask you if you knew
What a man that's troubled like me can do."

No other word fell in that place.
As one who hears too much is still
As though he has not heard,
I waited dumb, apace,
Watching his eyes drop lightless as at first
And all their fortune spill.
A curious twist
Came to his lips just as I lost his face
In warm and sudden mist
That round my eyes' hot lashes stirred.
Above the stillness a loud bird
Sang resolute, as if the lid
Of some vast trouble-pot had burst
Beneath his startled throat
And he must drown if he should mute one note.
I moved to where the bloom
Of a silver haw-bush splashed and hid
My silence from the throttling gloom
About the boy; then slowly found my road;
Taking, and leaving, the old, imponderable load.





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