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Drought
-
James Kelly
January 1937
He sits and watches the burning sky
And is sad for it does not rain.
His hot blue eyes scan the sky
And he wonders if it will ever rain,
His head afire like the sky.
He thinks of rains he knew—
The soft-fingered rains that drenched the tree in the garden;
The rains that formed small lakes in the field,
Small muddy lakes into which his feet would sink,
And he loved the sound they made
When he drew them out.
He thinks of these—and other rains.
His body is fever, like the sterile earth,
From the sun. His tobacco stained moustache
Droops, the fuzz on his cheeks has become a beard.
And he wonders if it will ever rain.
The stub of a cigar is in his cracked lips
And he is sad, for he knows
The wheat and the corn in the field
To be like the ashes at his feet.
He cannot tell the withered grain and corn
From the smoked and dead ashes.
He is sad, because the earth, that for a yard under
Should be almost black and rich, is sand.
And decayed are the roots that sought life in it.
He is sad, for his wife is dead in the dead earth.
Her hair had become brown from the sun, and dry.
Her lips had been parched by the sun
And her young face grown old
And shrunken with many, many cracks.
Her full breasts had shrunken and sagged
And she could not nurse her child.
She had sweated blood in the heat
And with her child she had died of the fever.
He had buried them and was sad.
- His son had spoken to him!
"We still have the house."
- And he had answered:
"The house is not the bread nor the water."
- "We still have the field:"
- "Dead is the field without the water."
- "I have my wife."
- "The earth has mine."
- "You have your life."
- "Life is but abuse."
- "Have you nothing?"
- "I have my dreams."
- "Then you shall dream."
- "And wither like the wheat."
- His eyes are two burning holes
As he sits and watches the sun
And dreams and withers like the wheat.
- In the Stock Exchange
- Men shout themselves thirsty.
Speculators try to buy grain
And the price soars high.
The owners hold and refuse to sell
And wait for the price to go still higher.
They shout themselves thirsty in the Stock Exchange
And drink mineral water from paper cups.
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