In October of the year,
he counts potatoes dug from the brown field, counting the seed, counting the cellar’s portion out, and bags the rest on the cart’s floor. He packs wool sheared in April, honey in combs, linen, leather tanned from deerhide, and vinegar in a barrel hooped by hand at the forge’s fire. He walks by his ox’s head, ten days to Portsmouth Market, and sells potatoes, and the bag that carried potatoes, flaxseed, birch brooms, maple sugar, goose feathers, yarn. When the cart is empty he sells the cart. When the cart is sold he sells the ox, harness and yoke, and walks home, his pockets heavy with the year’s coin for salt and taxes, and at home by fire’s light in November cold stitches new harness for next year’s ox in the barn, and carves the yoke, and saws planks building the cart again. |
Ox Cart Man
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He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin Through Mariposa, up the Dangerous Mountain roads, And pulled in at eight a.m. With his big truckload of hay behind the barn. With winch and ropes and hooks We stacked the bales up clean To splintery redwood rafters High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa Whirling through shingle-cracks of light, Itch of haydust in the sweaty shirt and shoes. At lunchtime under Black oak Out in the hot corral, ---The old mare nosing lunchpails, Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds--- "I'm sixty-eight" he said, "I first bucked hay when I was seventeen. I thought, that day I started, I sure would hate to do this all my life. And dammit, that's just what I've gone and done." |
Hay for the Horses Gary Snyder |
The poems “Hay for the Horses” by Gary Snyder and “Ox Cart Man” by Donald Hall go against Rushdie’s ideas and illustrate Russell Sanders’ ideas. The man Donald Hall describes in his poem is a man who goes to the market with his ox and ox cart full of goods and crops to sell and after selling all of the goods, he sells the ox and cart and then returns home. The man always returns home and follows the same routine every year. The ox cart man is rooted in his home and because of this Hall’s poem shows durability. The speaker's attitude towards the subject in this poem is content and show that the ox cart man enjoys his routine and being able to return home. On the other hand, the man that Gary Snyder describes in “Hay for the Horses” is constantly traveling around selling hay. This poem also shows durability, but instead of durability in a place to call home, this poem shows durability in his job. The speaker’s attitude, however; in this poem is negative and this shown when he says, “‘I’m sixty-eight . . .I first bucked hay when I was seventeen. I thought, that day I started, I sure would hate to do this all my life. And dammit, that’s just what I’ve gone and done’” (Snyder 1). Due to the speaker’s negative tone in the poem “Hay for the Horses”, these poems appeal to Russell Sanders’ ideas and prove it is admirable to find a durable place to call home and “Ox Cart Man” conveys this in a respectful tone.
Someone who refutes Russell Sanders and Hall's claim and supports Salman Rushdie is Walt Whitman: