In the Northern Plain,
In the rustling pine forests,
A clearing, once docile
To the hands of man and bland
With hopeful crops,
Had long lain desolate.
Strangled with couch grass
And the deadly nightshade -
Brilliant of blossom, baneful in effect -
The haunt of bloated rats,
This verminous swamp had been a source
Of pestilence far and about, both East and West,
For many a year.
One day the men returned,
Carrying with them corn of a new kind,
Tested in far fields and found
Sturdy and of unprecedented yield.
Long in the wilderness these men had wandered,
Death and privation suffered, vile misuse
At the hands of a barbarous tribe.
Now with that tribe vanquished
And the renewed strength born of hope,
They set to work to clear the forest ground
And plant it with the staff of life at last.
According to the compass of their strength
They drove the chaos back. Their seed
Found the new soil congenial to its being
And flourished.
Yet the full harvest of their hopes
Stayed unachieved. The lurking wild
Sent out long shoots under their field,
Encroached upon its edges where it could
Or set marauding rats, that in the green and tender shoots
Ran riot.
Some souls despaired of the attempt and ran
Naked into the forest to the west,
Decked out their heads with vicious bog-blooms,
Stained their lips with the juice of the nightshade,
Lived like beasts with the wild beasts
And tuned their voices to the wolves baying.
But the rest gathered in council.
Their decision was to build a wall,
A palisade in their and their field's defence.
In one short night was the timber cut,
The stakes sharpened, the piles driven deep,
And the wall built. A harvest such
As they reaped then this field,
Even in its balmiest days,
Had never witnessed.
Gently the men succoured the seed,
And when the time was ripe,
Sowed all the land with it,
Even to the horizon's brim.
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©Renate Mitchell. May not be reproduced in any form online or offline without explicit written permission.