All Hallows

Louise Glück (1943-2023) – All Hallows (Allerheiligen)

All Hallows

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

(Louise Glück kreeg in 2020 de Nobelprijs voor Literatuur. Uit: The First Four Books of Poems. The Ecco Press, 1995 – Beeld: redactie HMG)