Older man holding a grain cradle in a field, later 19th century.
“That farm country which, when understood, becomes an intense experience—that was Knister's milieu, the central column of his thought. He made excursions away, but always he returned to the fields he had tilled in boyhood—hating, yet loving them.” (xi)
From "Raymond Knister. A Memoir" by Dorothy Livesay, in The Collected Poems of Raymond Knister. (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1949, page xi)
Time
I thought that old earth’s flesh was dead.
So panged of cold it lay,
So dried and powdered.
But the sun came strong,
Hid all else but himself,
Bending a strong breath upon it,
'Til moisture came,
And the flesh was freshened
Richly,
To await another dry-time
After the flourish and rise of green,
After the cutting and trampling of yellow.
(After Exile, page 25)