Welcome back to The Daily Poem on the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I am David Kern.

Today is Wednesday, June 10, 2020.

Today's poem is by Gene Toomer, an American poet who was born now with the name of Nathan

Pinchback Tumor.

He lived from 1894 to 1967.

He's a poet and novelist who is often known as part of the Harlem Renaissance,

though apparently he was not comfortable with the association with being called a part of that

movement. The poem that I'm going to read today is a poem called Harvest Song. It goes like this.

I'm a reaper whose muscles set at sundown.

All my oats are cradled, but I'm too chilled and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger. I crack a grain between my teeth.

I do not taste it. I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. I hunger. My eyes are caked with dust of oat fields at harvest time. I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking stacked fields of other harvesters. It would be

good to see them, crooked, split, and iron-ringed handles of the scyves. It would be good to see them, crooked, split, and iron-ringed handles of the scytheisthes.

It would be good to see them, dust-caked and blind.

I hunger.

Dusk is a strange, feared sheathed their blades are dulled in.

My throat is dry, and should I call a cracked grain like the oats echo?

I fear to call.

What should they hear me, and offer me that grain, oats, or wheat, or corn?

I have been in the fields all day. I fear I could not taste it. I fear knowledge of my hunger. My ears are caked with dust of oat fields at harvest time. I am a deaf man who strains to hear the calls of other harvesters whose throats are also dry.

It would be good to hear their songs, reapers of the sweet, stocked cane, cutters of the corn.

Even though their throats cracked and the strangeness of their voices deafened me.

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