Taxman

Adriaen van Ostade

Taxman

Seven scythes leaned at the wall.

Beard upon golden beard

The last barley load

Swayed through the yard.

The girls uncorked the ale.

Fiddle and feet moved together.

Then between stubble and heather

A horseman rode.

George Mackay Brown 

 

I love the image this poem paints - after all the the hard work, the sweat of the season, the worry over the weather, finally, the harvest is in! 

It's done!

Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and the sweet moment of completion inspires

dancing, drinking, feasting ----

 

 

until a familiar figure rises in the distance...

 

 

 

Funny/not funny, right?

 

 

 

Words

 

 

Agnelo Bronzino

Words

 

Always the arriving winds of words

Pour like Atlantic gales over these ears,

These reefs, these foils and fenders, these shrinking

And sea-scalded edges of the brainland.

Rebutted and rebounding, on they post

Past my remembrance, falling all unplanned.

But some day out of the darkness they'll come forth,

Arrowed and narrowed into my tongue's tip,

And speak for me -- their most astonished host.

 

W.R. Rodgers

The image of words as a wind, a storm, as waves hitting the "sea-scalded edges of the brainland" is so perfectly fitting.

Ceaseless, loud, battering - this is a familiar, daily experience.

The thought that some day this gale might turn, might come from me instead of at me,

I'm not sure if that's a good thing.