And through the dragged night

A time of the hard-eye sky
and brittle heat which broadcasts
sleep of ache and dust.
A time of the empty bird-noise
bounce and lean loin tower erect
and sprung in the dry desert bed.
A grief of dusk from
a moment of hope,
sun-struck in the ripening year.
The fire-flushed steed riding bare.

Until a consummation.

Into the waste the reaching wires stretch
their fingers of throb and steel and
grasp the brutish spike in molten clutch.
And with the belly shout and tide
of tongue, the great grinding trucks of
seed thud along my white mile corridors.
To stream their spore into the fruit-flung pit.

Norman Bilbrough.