I bought an antique scythe
I bought an antique two-handed
agricultural scythe. A joke:
I looked as risible as death
in the small shop’s mottled mirror
and remembered through my child’s eyes,
crow-sharp and credulous, watching
two men ecstatically swaying,
to the swing of the wheat as it fell:
an easy labour, not scything
but smoking, talking men’s talk, spitting
on stones. This is no time for grief;
I have lost the loss of the scythe.
The curved snath, weathered and bent round
generations of peasants, tall
as a reaper, the curlew blade
dulled, like history, from disuse.
Eyes never saw what my memory recalled
collaged it from folk song, old film,
willed-dream: mowing is mechanised,
misbeliefs purchased with credit.
I shall scour the sweat from its shaft,
burnish the blade and sheath its edge,
fix it to a wall, exhibition
of beyond recollection or,
more daring, set it over a door
dead-locked against the past;
and accidents.
