I WATCHED the agony of a mountain farm, a gangrenous decay; the farm died with the pines that sheltered it the farm died when the woodshed rotted away. It died to the beat of a loose board on the barn that flapped in the wind all night; nobody thought to drive a nail in it. The farm died in a broken window light, a broken pane upstairs in the double bedroom through which the autumn rain beat down all night on the mouldy turkey carpet; nobody thought to putty another pane. Nobody thought to nail a slat on the corncrib nobody mowed the hay nobody came to mend the rotting fences. The farm died when the two boys went away, or maybe lived till the lone old man was buried but after it was dead I loved it more though poison sumac grew in the empty pastures, though ridgepoles fell and though the fall winds whistled all the night through an open and empty door. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WALT WHITMAN'S CAUTION by WALT WHITMAN THE STOLEN CHILD by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS WITH A COPY OF CALVERLEY by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS LAURENCE BLOOMFIELD IN IRELAND: 7. MIDSUMMER by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM WAR DEAD by PATRICK JOHN MCALISTER ANDERSON CIGARS AND BEER by GEORGE ARNOLD |