Wallace Stevens - Dry Loaf lyrics

It is equal to living in a tragic land To live in a tragic time. Regard now the sloping, mountainous rocks And the river that batters its way over stones, Regard the hovels of those that live in this land. That was what I painted behind the loaf, The rocks not even touched by snow, The pines along the river and the dry men blown Brown as the bread, thinking of birds Flying from burning countries and brown sand shores, Birds that came like dirty water in waves Flowing above the rocks, flowing over the sky, As if the sky was a current that bore them along, Spreading them as waves spread flat on the shore, One after another washing the mountains bare. It was the battering of drums I heard It was hunger, it was the hungry that cried And the waves, the waves were soldiers moving, Marching and marching in a tragic time Below me, on the asphalt, under the trees. It was soldiers went marching over the rocks And still the birds came, came in watery flocks, Because it was spring and the birds had to come. No doubt that soldiers had to be marching And that drums had to be rolling, rolling, rolling.