They went off on the buckboard in the rain,
The children in the straw. I didn't know
Which one of the long roads they'd have to go,
But I saw them just as plain.

For anywhere they chose to turn the horses
There'd be the same gray miles of tableland,
The same rank smell of sage, the same wet sand
In the windy watercourses.

And anywhere in time there'd be red hills
Rising, raw rock against the rain. I saw
The plunge and splash across a lonely draw,
The long slow climb with red mud on the hills.

And somewhere, in good time, I knew they'd pass
As if in secret from the road they travelled,
To follow out like a thread of rope unravelled
Some faint mark in the grass,

And come to a gate, perhaps where a stray steer
Breathed in the dusk, or slipped on the wet stone there;
And come to a house ... I knew they'd be alone there
Most of the year.

The earth would slowly change where they had stepped,
The air would fill up softly with the sound
Of teams, voices ... I thought the red hills must have slept
Until they woke the ground.

I thought no words could make, on anybody's mouth,
As true an image as their hills would keep of them,
Where on our world spread westward like a cloth
They worked a homely hem.