'The Brass Locust' (poem) written by Jane Tyson Clement

This poem is from the anthology 'The Heart's Necessities'

So now again the tide wanes and the air

is rich with what would rather be forgotten;

and hard on the morning, on the changing wind

the eternal locust sounds its sharp despair;

the rasp of autumn and the rasp of heat,

metal of prophecy but not of peace,

awl in the ear to make us bondsmen here,

brand in the flesh of mind; under the beat

of sun, of light rain, of the dazzling earth

we lose the visioned, the encompassing eye;

the brass of locust boring in the noon

speaks for the alien and the coming dearth:

the unwise lift their heads, remembering cold,

regathering wisdom, as the sun grows old.