Returning from the Fields

Evening rewards hard toil with heavenly gold…
Women appear in dainty cotton dresses,
plait sprigs of lime and lily in their tresses,
or ply the needle on the cool threshold.
 
Two girls with water-pitchers sidle by…
The shawls, the studded boots, the walking-sticks;
the sleepy lapse of time that quietly ticks.
Combing the thickets, an Arcadian sigh…
 
Strict silence. ...The marimbas’ hollow clang
hums ballads at the pond where vapours hang.
The lakes fade out as ghostly pinpoints burn,
 
the hills, now mythic, wear a rosy crown…
Far off, the tracks are smoking, dusty-brown,
as all who labour in the fields return.