THE WHEAT FIELDS OF CHERNOBYL

Will you be now
A land without eagles
Where wrens and sparrows
Find no solitary bough
Or limb unscarred
By a rain of ashes

Will your children claw the fields for bread
And find there only dust
Will wombs be vacant
And marrow sterile
Will your roses bloom only in memory
And your lilies vanish from the field?




CANCER AND THE SOUTHERN CROSS

At the tips of the cross
They beckon
Those four invincible beacons
Flinging wide their shaft of light
Keepers of the harbor
Where you know the voyage ends

They split the fog
Swallow whole the radioactive wind
They whisper the node of cells
That spreads its shroud across your lung
Cannot smother the heart
Or invade the terrain where courage dwells

They summon you to a tournament
Where a determined jouster earns the laurel wreath
They invite you to a banquet of light
Spread in the shadow of a cross.


Suzanne Harvey is a member of the Academy of American Poets. For almost two decades she lectured in the English Department at Stanford University in California. She is now retired. In addition, for a semester, she was a visiting lecturer in the English Department at the University of California at Berkeley, and for almost a decade she was an instructor in the Publishing Program at the University of California at Berkeley Extension.