These are registers on the staff
of days: grains of dust that gather
like vellum in summer, the high and lazy
whirring of ceiling fans. Drifts of yellow
petals falling from the tulip trees, pitch
and warble of birds. Gather and gather,
lisp the ants and worker bees; pluck
and scour. The season lilts like a song
working the route to its coda. Lyric by lyric
the mouth learns the intricate passages:
where the rests are, and the furrows.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Lyric by lyric/ the mouth learns the intricate passages:/where the rests are, and the furrows.
THE GLEANER’S SONG
When the gleaners stretch their backs at sundown
among the terraces, they troll their ditties of work,
and throw their jute sacks on their sunburnt backs:
“Where the heavens meet the sea, O Kannoyan,
Where the pinetrees sway with the wind dance,
We will be there, we shall gather the roots, gather
the banana leaves to wrap the broiled mudfish,
and bring them home, bring them home, to hold
the feast at eventide, to burn venison in campfire.
O, Old Kannoyan, we praise you with our songs,
we pray with our flaccid hands that in the morrow
will be strong, we bless you with our gleaner’ song.”
At sunrise, they will be there again to trace roots
that lace the furrows of ancient soil, where fathers
have found their forebears’ lair laden with lore
about the worksongs of the native braves, tillers
of the softened clay, hunters of the ripened hills
where wild boars roamed with the dappled deer.
I will learn these songs, sing these songs, until
every passage, every word, shall have become
my martial beat and the quiet lullaby of my soul.
—Albert B. Casuga
06-13-11