End Of A Day

In the long evening of April through the cool light Bayle's two sheep dogs sail down the lane like magpies for the flock a moment before he appears near the oaks a stub of a man rolling as he approaches smiling and smiling and his dogs are afraid of him we stand among the radiant stones looking out over green lucent wheat and earth combed red under bare walnut limbs bees hanging late in cowslips and lingering bird cherry stumps and brush that were the grove of hazel trees where the land turns above the draped slopes and the valley filled with its one sunbeam and we exchange a few questions as though nothing were different but he has bulldozed the upland pastures and the shepherds' huts into piles of rubble and has his sheep fenced in everyone's meadows now the smell of box and damp leaves drifts from the woods where a blackbird is warning of nightfall Bayle has plans to demolish the ancient walls of the lane and level it wide so that trucks can go all the way down to where the lambs with perhaps two weeks to live are waiting for him at the wire he hurries toward them while the sun sinks and the hour turns chill as iron and in the oaks the first nightingales of the year kindle their unapproachable voices