Downslope of a hill, dusk. Flowers, weeds, tall grass across it stand sharply, as if the hair bristling on some mortal thing surprised, fixed in the astonishment of the moment of its death. In spite of this, a warming sun overhead, maternal and caressing as it sets.

Woman
     My hill, my guardian from the first days. You are stiff. You are like the last head of a man, his frozen face.

Voice
     Our grasses

Voice
     are deserted.

Voice
     Take one.

Woman
     If I forget you, I forget myself. If I desert you, it is my own heart I desert. (Plucks a spear. Holds it up, the line of stalk severing the sun.) There.

Voice
     Love is in your hands. We desire your dress, to be worn by you. Save us from this field.

Woman
     And you will save me from the bareness of this life. (Takes another. Wears it.)

Voice
     Night, when we sleep in frost, cannot make us forget the days. Night is weak. We want to live or to die—not both. Save us—take more.

Woman
     (Walking further down.) My body can hold you only so many at once.

Voice
     Stay!

Woman
     (Walking)

Voice
     The sun goes under the hill!

Voice, new,
     (Waking) Stay!

Voice
     Stay!

Voice
     The sun rests, the winds wake.

Voice
     The winds are straitening.

Voice
     The winds, waking—

Voice
     Beg them off.

Voice, new,
     Stay with us. Sink in our fields.

Voice
     The winds—

Voice
     are waking!

Voices, many,
     Stay!—
        Stay!—
           Stay!—

Woman
     (Further) I have no time.

Voice
     Under the hill.

Voices, many,
     Stay!—
        Stay!—
           Stay!—

Woman
     My time is leaving.

A chorus of Stay! in which woman and field are lost.