In the Absence of Clocks

Finding the Old Family Farm

1 Finding the Old Family Farm Near the Western Buh River, the traditional division between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, East and West At dusk, I pole a split branch through fog. This is old work, as is my pitch-pine fire, my mushrooms, borscht, and smoked tea. Now the fields grow only voices: ghost farmers who shame the bloodless beets. Redden, they say, thrive. They pray into the breeze, beneath the song of the stork, the nightingale. From the hill’s heavy sickle of mist, the dead still beg and bray. The years go on, they say. What voice can call back to these men, answer the ox-hauled moon? ...