Bush land scrub land —
            Cashel Township and Wollaston
Elvezir McClure and Dungannon
green lands of Weslemkoon Lake
where a man might have some 
            opinion of what beauty
is and none deny him 
                                  for miles —

Yet this is the country of defeat 
where Sisyphus rolls a big stone 
year after year up the ancient hills 
picnicking glaciers have left strewn 
with centuries’ rubble 
                               backbreaking days
       in the sun and rain
when realization seeps slow in the mind
without grandeur or self deception in
                        noble struggle
of being a fool —

A country of quiescence and still distance
a lean land 
               not like the fat south
with inches of black soil on 
                  earth’s round belly —
And where the farms are  
                 it’s as if a man stuck
both thumbs in the stony earth and pulled 
                 it apart
to make room 
enough between the trees 
for a wife
           and maybe some cows and 
           room for some 
of the more easily kept illusions —
And where the farms have gone back
to forest 
          are only soft outlines and 
          shadowy differences —

Old fences drift vaguely among the trees
          a pile of moss-covered stones
gathered for some ghost purpose
has lost meaning under the meaningless sky
            — they are like cities under water
and the undulating green waves of time 
            are laid on them —

This is the country of our defeat 
            and yet 
during the fall plowing a man
might stop and stand in a brown valley of the furrows
           and shade his eyes to watch for the same
            red patch mixed with gold 
            that appears on the same
            spot in the hills 
            year after year 
            and grow old
plowing and plowing a ten acre field until 
the convolutions run parallel with his own brain —

And this is a country where the young 
                        leave quickly 
unwilling to know what their fathers know 
or think the words their mothers do not say —

Herschel Monteagle and Faraday 
lakeland rockland and hill country 
a little adjacent to where the world is 
a little north of where the cities are and 
sometime 
we may go back there
                       to the country of our defeat
Wollaston Elvezir Dungannon 
and Weslemkoon lake land 
where the high townships of Cashel 
                                              McClure and Marmora once were —
But it’s been a long time since 
and we must enquire the way 
                  of strangers —