Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SOWING, by FREDERICK R. MCCREARY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SOWING, by                    
First Line: April is a man
Last Line: And we pray.
Subject(s): April; Plants; Seeds; Planting; Planters


April is a man,
Coming at dusk out of the fat loins of the hills,
Coming darkly with a heavy step,
Pushing a plow and splitting the earth open,
Splitting it open, revealing the night.
He smiles never, neither does he cry out;
Tramping far, tramping wide,
His breath is a gray mist
And a black rain follows in his footsteps.

And April is a woman,
Waiting with long fingers of willow,
When she laughs
Forsythia runs golden along all the fences;
When she weeps
Pansies look up with compassion;
And the apple trees,
Green bubbles iridescent,
Float on the hillsides.

When I knelt this morning, preparing my seeds in the mist,
And my knees sank into the harrowed brown earth,
I knew that the apple stump crouching beside me
Was a brother.
I knew there were hands following the movements of my hands,
Aching to lift and to scatter;
And I knew that the earth, waiting and waiting so long,
Was eager and breathless for our burden.
I knew there was a lover preparing himself in the Mohawk Valley,
Another in Ohio, and one in Montana.
My hands sinking into the smooth seeds,
And into those that were wrinkled,
Touched lover hands from all over,
From England, even, and Russia.
I touched hands that had sown the old crops of the Nile,
Long ago,
Hands that had flung out the seeds of old China,
Long ago;
And I touched the fingers of the Indian planters
That had probed this soil that I knelt in --
While the apple stump moved nearer,
Whispering and longing.

April comes looking ahead,
April comes looking behind,
Comes with the past in the left hand,
The future spread in the right.
The grass turns green in the graveyards first
And grows tallest by the old stones;
Tombstones kneel in the new grass;
I and the apple stump kneel in the dark earth
Busy with our planting.
Handfuls of seeds,
I sift them into long slits of darkness,
Cover them over
And trample them down;
Handfuls of seeds,
I throw them far,
To the east, to the west,
To the north, to the south,
Wherever the rain hunts
And the sun comes after.
O reach high, you red-budded maples!
O reach high, you clean-thrusting steeples!
A man goes putting his right hand into the bowl of his left arm,
Taking yesterday and the day before,
And slinging them wide,
The palpitant stuff of tomorrow!

The green drench of April,
The slow trek of April over the meadows;
How long from the seed corn to the cut stalk,
Standing one of a brown bundle late in September?
The corn is everlasting;
It stood silently
Watching us come while the Indian departed;
It will stand quietly
Watching us go and whatever comes after us.

Filled with the noons and the afternoons,
Of the days before,
The willows stand warm and waiting,
While the frogs count coins of the past,
The single pieces of silver, of gold,
The long-rippling stacks of cool copper.
The cows in the barnyard stand for the milking,
Milking by a woman whose breasts have grown heavy,
Who pulled the clothes from her bed last night
And slept naked with the April moon.
April is man,
April is woman,
The two are one,
And the one is tomorrow.
Now, earth and the mist,
I with the wrinkled seeds and the smooth seeds
Alone with an apple stump whispering.

We've forgotten the hands of the watches,
We've forgotten the tongues of the steeples,
We are in the fields and of them,
With the dark consecration of the planting:
Be fertile, O Earth, all of you,
Be fertile all the depth and the spread of you,
For our children grown many
And we lie in the nights listening
To the tramp of the coming generations.
Earth, mother,
Earth, pregnant,
You must labor and give forth --
Seeds in our hands, our hands in the earth,
We bow our heads
And we pray.





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