Voices: Donald Hall

For nearly all of his 77 years, Donald Hall has been writing poetry about, in his words, "love, death and New Hampshire." Next week, Hall becomes America's poet laureate. This is his first poem as laureate. It's called "Two Hayings."

"My grandfather and I would rally the horse

Took four days to hay the acres of grass from the fields on both sides of the house

After Riley pulled a mowing machine all morning, he drank a bucket of water then pulled a horse rake and turned the hay to dry in the sun

Then heaped it together with a sigh I trimmed the uncut hay around boulders and trees by stonewalls; and raked every blade to one of Riley's piles

My grandfather pitched it up on the rack where I climbed to load it, fitting forkfuls in place

We left behind us hayfields as neat as lawns

Sixty odd years later, a farmer's machines take alfalfa down in an afternoon

Next morning, an engine with huge claws grapples round green bales onto trucks leaving loose hay scattered and grasses waving at the field's margin.

From the porch where I rock with my book, I marvel at acceleration and dishevelment."

Hall: Poetry has showed me the way to feel again and again. How to contain my feeling, how to, how to be able to feel in that complicated, human way when you feel more than one way at once -- ways that seem contradictory but which are true both at the same time.