"Last Hill in a Vista" by Louise Bogan

LAST HILL IN A VISTA

Come, let us tell the weeds in ditches

How we are poor, who once had riches,

And lie out in the sparse and sodden

Pastures that the cows have trodden,

The while an autumn night seals down

The comforts of the wooden town.

Come, let us counsel some cold stranger

How we sought safety, but loved danger.

So, with stiff walls about us, we

Chose this more fragile boundary:

Hills, where light poplars, the firm oak,

Loosen into a little smoke.

Source of the text – Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968, p. 20.

TJB: The poet prefers eclogue over easy, not scrambled, in this polished miniature which might sound exotic to those not versed in country things.