Every new spring I'm drawn out of the city sooty. Town I was born, deep in this soil my roots are...

There in that wilderness
regard I was,
reached my manhood,
bore my first grievous loss,
fear the first time
surmounted.

There the first tractor's throbs
scared me,
to grow familiar.
There I first slaked my thirst
from the life-giving river.

All that befell me there
had an effect beneficial:
Heat did not sap my strength,
frost did not chill my initiative.

Say what you like,
the town has not a thing
to offer matching ripe wheat at dawn,
Wood-glades be-speckled with
strawberries.

Good,
how I yearn to go
back to my native Town,
work till my hands are raw,
limbs stiff with wholesome
weariness.

Sowing time,
do my stint,
toil in the furrow steadily,
till my heat-tortured lips
burn with a thirst unmanageable.

Wish I could add my own
bit to the common effort
where,
amid dust and smoke,
victory is being wrested.

Where my own field awaits
seed that will sprout and flower.
Spring,
to your bosom take
prodigal poet and ploughman !