Wallace Stevens - Dry Loaf lyrics

It is equal to living in a tragic land
To live in a tragic time
Regard now the sloping, mountainous rocks
And the river that batters
It's way over stones
Regard the hovels of those that
Live in this land

That was what I painted behind the loaf
The rocks not even touched by snow
The pines along the river and
The dry men blown
Brown as the bread, thinking of birds
Flying from burning countries and
Brown sand shores

Birds that came like dirty water in waves
Flowing above the rocks, flowing
Over the sky, as if the sky was a
Current that bore them along
Spreading them as waves spread
Flat on the shore
One after another washing the mountains bare

It was the battering of drums I heard
It was hunger, it was the hungry that cried
And the waves, the waves
Were soldiers moving
Marching and marching in a tragic time
Below me, on the asphalt, under the trees

It was soldiers went marching over the rocks
And still the birds came
Came in watery flocks
Because it was spring and the
Birds had to come
No doubt that soldiers had to be marching
And that drums had to be rolling, rolling
Rolling