By Maxine Kumin
While in Baghdad sewage infiltrates
the drinking water and no one dares go out
to market, or goes, inshallah, praying
to return, and everyone agrees
it's civil war as it was in Virgil's time,
brother Roman against brother Roman,
warrior farmers far from their barren fields,
I am reading that pastoral of hard work,
as Ferry calls it, introducing his
translation of The Georgics, still a handbook
for gardeners two millennia later.
Last winter's sooty ashes are spread
and fields are fertilized with oxen dung
much as we do today, with cow and horse manure.
It's garlic we plant in autumn, beans, yes, in spring
in this fallen world that darkens and darkens.
On January 12th, an ice-locked day,
I dig three carrots, just as the poet instructs us
to take joy in the very life of things
so that, when Zeus comes down in spring
to the joyful bridal body of the earth
and the animals all agree it is time,
I can believe the wheel will turn
once more, taking me with it or not.
RETURN