PLOUGHING by GEORGE ADDISON SCARBROUGH

I push back
through tattered
dictions,
the roughest usage

of tongues,
to the serf's
sniffle of verbs
in the cold shed:

hard consonants,
soft vowels
he hardly
comprehends

for their leniency:
villein's parlance:
ploughshare,
rasp, reaphook,

shovel's bite,
castration device:
the rottenest
eggs of words:

lexicons
of such heavy lives
I could blaspheme
under this mountain:

lacking latin's ivy,
the lilied gloss
of french:
sacerdote,

troubadour:
absurd in my surds:
yet pushing deep
in this black

earth: rolling
grubs of poems out
to the lank
light:

wizened, illiberal,
buttoned into the graveclothes
of seasonal
joy:

but nonetheless
refunding
the stooping killdeer's
withering cry.

http://www.wlu.edu/~shenano

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