| THE PIONEERS I fought out of hollows by neat farms, by cock and bull, waters quick as gin and gulping down the green slant of time, and paused, stinging wet in uplands of long grass, by a few tombs like thin crackers beaten with wind or resurrected souls with the last day past, and sneered down at those worn by grit to the bone, grudged them their ease. But out of the burlap air they gathered as they were, with curses nice as lead, strides that cowed hills, and red, chopping brawn. I squatted near the tombs nameless like great art, and I was lost for words and time, and fell apart in a chaos of green heat. |