Barley Field
by Olav H. Hauge

An old woodcut of the London Bridge
and a colored lithograph of a barley field.
There are no other pictures on Ward D.

The London Bridge lifts sooty towers above the river.
But it's the barley field I see.
A golden ocean of barley.

It's not like the other grain-fields.
Maybe it's those inward-looking eyes
gone into it so it becomes heaven?

A fall-colored sky, mild,
with no harvesters and no scythes.
Translated by Translated from the Norwegian by Robert Bly

From Volume 192, Number 1, April 2008

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