The Gleaners and other poems

Les glâneurs (The gleaners)

Snow came and went in the night
while we like beggars were
under our blankets, untouchable

Cold breath blows from the folded hills
on a village in quarantine, sealed doors,
streets quiet as field-stones

Between bare vine-rows, blue
sky-gates opening to the horizon

The tractor like a fishing boat
towing a wake of hungry gulls

The terroir tightening its belt,
the squirrel on its winter walnut trail

Mistletoe won’t grow in salt air,
preferring the land-locked
banks of the Loire, its white berries
...