Crippled Crop

by George Bailin (April 2015)

What have you planted

that you should reap

a swelling harvest, 

that steep hills of wheat 

should rise around you?

 

oh, you shrink

back, back… you flee

the sight of bare

fields, you sink

despairing, crying

how scant the dry

shoots!

 

how shall the dazed bee

find a single yellow flower 

among those wrecked roots?

 

ah, frail farmer,

what wan sowing

accounts 

for this parched hour?

how shall nectar ooze

from this arid ground?

 

it is justice, 

justice pounding

its strong fist.

astounded, the bleached horizon. 

this dear, dearest earth,

is blistered.

o, you,

you held it cheap.

 

______________________________

George Bailin is a retired high school  English teacher in the city of New York who taught as well in several colleges in the metropolitan area. He has published widely in many university literary magazines over the years. He is at work at  on a novel which has implications for  spiritual life. The founder of Seaport Poets & Writers Press, he will finish his book  this summer. Like many others, he has been considering the the threat to international polity posed by nuclear weapons, especially those in the hands of triumphalists

 

To comment on this poem, please click here.

To help New English Review continue to publish original poetry such as this, please click here.