The American poet displays uncharacteristic romantic and metaphysical tendencies, while pondering a golden field of wheat and the passing of time
The Sheaves
Where long the shadows of the wind had rolled,Green wheat was yielding to the change assigned;
And as by some vast magic undivined
The world was turning slowly into gold.
Like nothing that was ever bought or sold
It waited there, the body and the mind;
And with a mighty meaning of a kind
That tells the more the more it is not told.
So in a land where all days are not fair,
Fair days went on till on another day
A thousand golden sheaves were lying there,
Shining and still, but not for long to stay –
As if a thousand girls with golden hair
Might rise from where they slept and go away.
This week’s poem is one of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s later sonnets and is, in some ways, an atypical work. Even in his shorter pieces, Robinson favoured offbeat human characters, the “queer odd sticks of men”, as he described them (and women, too, of course). His wry vignettes and unheroic narratives were executed with the detachment and specificity of a certain kind of fiction writer – Chekhov might not be far off the comparative mark. Robinson’s forms were traditional, his subjects and approach were not.
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