It was the time of harvest. Boaz was asleep.
Exhausted by his labours on the threshing-floor,
He’d made his bed, as usual, by his harvest store
Of bushels full of wheat. His sleep was sweet and deep.
Boaz was old; as rich in barley as in wheat;
Despite his wealth, a man of justice and goodwill;
No dirt polluted water falling through his mill;
His white-hot forge concealed no hell-fire in its heat.
A brook in April’s flood, his beard was silver-grey.
His sheaves contained no hate nor meanness in their yield.
If some poor gleaning woman passed him in the field,
‘Throw down some ears of corn on purpose,’ he would say.
He’d made his way through life without deceit. He wore
White linen garments, and a pure heart on his sleeve.
He practised what he preached: give, sooner than receive.
His sacks of grain seemed public fountains to the poor.
Good master, faithful kinsman; never profligate,
Though generous with all he had; to women’s eyes
(Susceptible to youth) he was the greater prize.
The young man may be handsome, but the old is great.
To be content soon to return to whence he came;
To change this life of change for everlasting days;
Such readiness illuminates an old man’s gaze
More strongly than the flicker of a young man’s flame.
*********
So, here is Boaz, with his goods, his kith and kin
Around him; heaps of corn like piled-up ruins loom;
His sleeping harvesters are huddled in the gloom:
A world that has not aged much since its origin.
The tribes of Israel have a judge as chief. As yet
Men wander on the earth, dwelling in tents, afraid
To look upon the footprints giants must have made
In ground the ebbing flood has left still soft and wet.
*********
As Jacob and as Judith once in sleep had lain,
Boaz now lay, eyes closed, beneath a canopy
Of trees still in full leaf. A dream, a reverie
From heaven’s half-open gate, descended to his brain
In which, out of his belly, like a sprouting rod,
An oak tree rose into the sky. A chosen race,
Links in a long chain, scaled its height; down at its base
A king sang; at its top, men put to death their god.
And Boaz’ spirit murmured, ‘At my time of life,
How might a lineage like this begin with me?
A man past eighty, founder of a dynasty?
I have no son nor heir; no longer have a wife.
So many years have passed since she I loved the most
Lay down on your couch, Lord my God, in place of mine.
Now our two beings strangely once again combine:
She dwelling, half alive, in me, and I half ghost.
How could I credit that these ancient loins might sire
A race of men? That sons might spring from my spent force?
Young men are lusty when the night has run its course;
With joyful mornings comes rekindling of desire.
But old men shiver like a winter birch in bed.
I’m widowed and alone. The shades steal over me.
My soul, Lord God, is tending to eternity
The way a thirsty ox, by water, bends his head.’
Boaz spoke this in the amazement of his trance.
A rose may grow beside a cedar, and the tree
Not know it; Boaz, looking on God’s countenance,
Had no idea he slept with female company.
*********
In his oblivion, came Ruth, a Moabite,
And lay down at the old man’s feet. Her breasts were bare.
She hoped we know not what chance ray might touch her there
When he should start awake, his eyes renewed with light.
So Boaz had no thought a woman lay close by,
And Ruth no knowledge of God’s will. But that sweet smell
Borne on the air arose from clumps of asphodel
And over Gilgal night’s breath drifted in the sky.
The solemn dark seemed apt to bless a marrying.
Ascending and descending, angels kept a watch;
That night, quick, with the eye of faith, you just could catch
A sudden flash of blue which might have been a wing.
The sound of Boaz’ breathing mingled with the flow
Of hidden water over moss, where streams begin.
It was the month when nature brings her bounty in;
When, crowning hilltops all around, white lilies blow.
Ruth dreamed and Boaz slept; the grass was black as ink;
The cow- and sheep-bells tinkled faintly. On that place
Dropped from the firmament immensity of grace.
It was the tranquil hour, when lions go to drink.
In Ur and Jerimadeth all was peace profound.
The sky’s great cloth was pierced with dots and flecks of light.
A thin, clear crescent moon, amongst these flowers of night,
Showed in the west. Ruth made no movement, not a sound;
Into her half-closed eyes moonlight and starlight shone.
She wondered: once eternal summer’s crop was mown,
What god, what harvester so carelessly had thrown
His golden sickle on that field of stars, and gone?
