Poems from "A Mellow Horn" by Harvey W. Flink (1943)

Old Couple Cutting off Corn

They live in a little whitewashed house
In the valley where they were born;
And autumn finds this couple in the corn fields,
Cutting off corn.
The old man's mouth is tobacco-stained
And wrinkled by ribald fun.
His trousers are the color of forget-me-nots
Bleached by the sun.
The old woman's cheeks are like dried peaches;
Her birdlike eyes are gay.
She wears black stocking-legs on her arms
And her skirt is sky-gray.
Whack!. . .Whack!. . .down the ripening rows
Of green stalks streaked with gold;
And the knives they wield have been ground on a grindstone,
A century old.
Whack!. . .Whack!. . .the tall stalks topple
In the raw faintly purple air;
And a half of the crisp sweet-smelling fodder
Is their laborer's share.
These two own the little whitewashed house
And an acre of stony ground.
They keep a few hens, a pig and a cow,
And work around.
“Folks hate to live off of the government
In the valley where we were born.”
So autumn finds this couple in the corn fields,
Cutting off corn.

The Hill-Fields

We are the worthless fields that lie

Abandoned under the autumn sky,

The fallow acres that cannot find

A place in the scheme of humankind.

Mountain folk fenced us, and asked us for bread;

And complained when we gave them weeds instead.

They drifted away and left us to grow

The only sustenance we know:

Scrub oak, thorn apple, a few jack pines,

Grass entangled in dewberry vines,

Wild asters, purple-blue and white,

And goldenrod like the sun's own light.

Here is beauty for the eye to reap

And give to the hungry soul to keep;

But we are the fields man counts well lost,

Awaiting the harvest of the frost.

The Hunters

Our long blue shadows danced on the snow that has fallen

during the night;

And the phantom diamonds the troll-folk scatter flashed in

the morning light.

We crossed a field, golden-spiked with unharvested grass,

and entered a woods.

“Are those only rocks?” my brother cried, “Or gnomes in

their peaked white hoods?”

I often hunt with my gun in the forest where the oaks are

old and tall

And hear the runic song of the withered leaves that would

not fall.

I often hunt in the forest and hear the sounds of hoofs going by,

But it isn't the lady on horseback whose cloak is red as the

sunset sky.

I hunted that day in the forest; I started and chased an

antlered buck;

And I came home in the thinning sunlight, proud of my

hunter's luck.

No brother returned as evening gathered; no brother

returned at dawn. . . .

He suddenly stood like a ghost in the doorway, when the

seventh year had gone.

His blighted face was a wan wrinkled fungus; his form was

shrunken and bent;

And he blinked at me like a man freed from dark

imprisonment.

“An enchanted cavern! I saw it!” he babbled, “huge chests

that are heaped with gold!

I drank from a flagon—a magic flagon—and I never shall

grow old!”

We heard the clatter if hoofs in the night; my brother

uttered a cry:

“It's her—the elfin lady on horseback, her cloak red as the

sunset sky!”

Symbols

My living-room is as it used to be;

But spider webs enshroud Beethoven's bust,

And I could write your name and mine in dust

Upon the table, where we drank our tea.

The violin lies mute beside its case;

The grand piano lid is folded back,

And “Liebesfreud” turns yellow on the rack;

While flower stems stand bare in every vase.

This room is as it was when you were here:

I have not touched a thing; and even yet

I think I scent a Turkish cigarette—

The last you smoked beneath the chandelier.

My love, I even did not throw away

The cold, dead ashes on the copper tray.

There is the Breaking

Under the web of dark naked branches
My footfalls make a stir
In the rustly drifts of copper leaves,
Tinged with lavender.
The winds keep sighing in the brown scrub oaks;
Caw . . . caw . . . the treetops cry;
And I catch a glimpse of soot-black wings
Fanning a blue-gray sky.
There is the breaking of a lonely heart
In every woodland sound
That echoes through autumn's labyrinths
From sky and bush and ground.