The Harvesters

Three Poems and a Painting

The Harvesters, by Pieter Bruegel

The Corn Harvest

Summer !
the painting is organized
about a young

reaper enjoying his
noonday rest
completely

relaxed
from his morning labors
sprawled

in fact sleeping
unbuttoned
on his back

the women
have brought him his lunch
perhaps

a spot of wine
they gather gossiping
under a tree

whose shade
carelessly
he does not share the

resting
center of
their workaday world

-William Carlos Williams

---

Bruegel’s Harvesters

Though they stoop and sweat
outside a stingy circle
that the pear tree affords ...

though the mustardy sheaves
of their morning's labor
lie stiff in their ranks as battle-

tallied dead . . . and though
the tree itself, coiling
ungracefully heavenward, past

a blue steeple, splits
their world with its axis,
here is Eden after all

which the artist makes
us contemplate
by planting in the foreground

that husky, unkempt reaper
with his legs splayed wide,
forcing our gaze crotchward,

to the solid drowse
of his codpiece so casually
unlaced, while another,

nearby, holding summer-
ripe fruit firmly to his lips,
stares out at us, and eats.

-Richard Foerster

---

The Seed Cutters

They seem hundreds of years away. Brueghel,
You’ll know them if I can get them true.
They kneel under the hedge in a half-circle
Behind a windbreak wind is breaking through.
They are the seed cutters. The tuck and frill
Of leaf-sprout is on the seed potatoes
Buried under that straw. With time to kill,
They are taking their time. Each sharp knife goes
Lazily halving each root that falls apart
In the palm of the hand: a milky gleam,
And, at the centre, a dark watermark.
Oh, calendar customs! Under the broom
Yellowing over them, compose the frieze
With all of us there, our anonymities. 

-Seamus Heaney