POEM
Barley Field
An old woodcut of the London Bridge
and a colored lithograph of a barley field.
There are no other pictures on Ward D.
The London Bridge lifts sooty towers above the river.
But it's the barley field I see.
A golden ocean of barley.
It's not like the other grain-fields.
Maybe it's those inward-looking eyes
gone into it so it becomes heaven?
A fall-colored sky, mild,
with no harvesters and no scythes.
Translated by Robert Bly
Source: Poetry (April 2008).
This poem originally appeared in the April 2008 issue of Poetry.
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Olav H. Hauge (1908–1994) lived all his life in Ulvik, a village in the west of Norway . . . MORE »
