poem07 Jun 2020 04:41 pm
The Digger by Jean-François Millet, 1902

Robin Wyatt Dunn

Come with, Come with, down into Faerie,
Under the slip and sides of the glade;
Be showered with gifts.

"She bled from her mouth," the digger said,

"and we all stopped along the ditch,
and lay down our spades.

"Her skin was white as death,
and we stood and followed her into the trees.

"The barks of the elms curled under the sun,
whose rays turned blue,
and her teeth, into black chunks.

"Eamon said we would not return,
But I knew we would,
Because there was blood under her feet:
She had been weakened,
And needed our help to slip back into Faerie.

"We stood under a secret eye
and slid her limbs under the earth.
She shuddered like a crone
under her maiden sky.

"Afterwards, we could not find our spades.
I was out of work for three weeks,
& my hands they stayed cold all Spring.

"Eamon got a look in his eye then.
And I told him
'Go South, to the sea;
go into it;
and away from here.'
She still wanted him, you see.

"But he would not go.
One midnight I saw him by the well,
circling like a wounded crow.
I cried out,
But my mouth could make no sound.

"In the morning he was dead;
drowned. But not in the well.
His lungs was full of her bright blood.

"In digging, some times we bestir the edges
of their earths;
And sometimes I have told a tale I knew not to be true,
So that they would not return before winter."
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