Suffolk Poems

[Suffolk Poems, Michael Hamburger's new sequence, concludes with these three sections.]

VIII

   1
Brooding light. The days muted,
Muffled, as though no noise
From fighter 'plane, truck,
No voice from village or pasture
Could pierce it, this wad of silence
The land's put on; no wind,
Ruffling leafage still thick,
Green or yellowing (silvery
White, upturned, on the poplars)
Could prod a tree to hurry
Over the business of fall.

   2
Though as ever the air flows,
Freely grass and weeds
Grow, from new seed
Recently scattered, a circle,
Somewhere, is full, as the barns are,
The next not yet begun.
...