In the long evening of April through the cool light <br /> Bayle's two sheep dogs sail down the lane like magpies <br />for the flock a moment before he appears near the oaks <br /> a stub of a man rolling as he approaches <br />smiling and smiling and his dogs are afraid of him <br /> we stand among the radiant stones looking out over <br />green lucent wheat and earth combed red under bare walnut limbs <br /> bees hanging late in cowslips and lingering bird cherry <br />stumps and brush that were the grove of hazel trees <br /> where the land turns above the draped slopes and the valley <br />filled with its one sunbeam and we exchange a few questions <br /> as though nothing were different but he has bulldozed the upland <br />pastures and the shepherds' huts into piles of rubble <br /> and has his sheep fenced in everyone's meadows now <br />the smell of box and damp leaves drifts from the woods where a blackbird <br /> is warning of nightfall Bayle has plans to demolish <br />the ancient walls of the lane and level it wide <br /> so that trucks can go all the way down to where the lambs <br />with perhaps two weeks to live are waiting for him at the wire <br /> he hurries toward them while the sun sinks and the hour <br />turns chill as iron and in the oaks the first nightingales <br /> of the year kindle their unapproachable voices<br /><br />William Stanley Merwin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/end-of-a-day-2/
