"Haec mea sunt," he says

I think one cannot recommend,
to relieve that sensation so
prevalent these days, of be-
ing too captivated by "cur-
rent events," any flight to
agrarian Classics we grew up
with, culturally, figurative-
ly, academically, literally.

Lycidas, we never thought that what
Has happened to us was ever going
  to happen,
And now we've lived to see it. 
  A stranger came
To take possession of our farm, and   said: 
"I own this place; you have to  leave this place."


"haec mea sunt; 
ueteres migrate coloni"






Now, when the literature of
the rural preserve, such as
we still renew so gainfully
in our time, is revisited as
an escape, we find a shadow
has always been there; and
if it is true, that finally
it is this nation's turn to
endure its weight, it is as
if we were being scavenged,
but for the life of poetry.

                  .. when eagles come

                  tell me what doves can do about it?

Virgil
The Eclogues
  Eclogue IX
  Lycidas and Moeris
  [fragments]
David Ferry
  translation
op. cit.

Verlyn Klinkenborg
The Rural Life
Little, Brown & Co, 2003©

Michael McCarthy
The Moth Snowstorm
  Nature and Joy
New York Review Books, 2015©