THE BRASS LOCUST - by Jane Tyson Clement

 

THE  BRASS  LOCUST by   Jane Tyson Clement So now again the tide wanes and the airis rich with what would rather be forgotten;and hard on the moving, on the changing windthe eternal locust sounds its sharp despair:the rasp of autumn and the rasp of heat,metal of prophecy but not of peace,awl in the ear to make us bondsmen here,brand in the flesh of mind; under the beatof sun, of light rain, of the dazzling earthwe lose the visioned, the encompassing eye;the brass of locust boring in the noonspeaks for the alien and the coming dearth:the unwise lift their heads, remembering cold,regathering wisdom, as the sun grows old.