Summary

“Reapers” opens with the image of the titular “Black reapers … sharpening scythes” for their harvesting work (1-2). Immediately, the speaker’s first-person presence suddenly intrudes in the poem, as he clarifies that the scene described in the poem is what “I see” (2). He observes the reapers “place the hones / In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done, / And start their silent swinging, one by one” (2-4).

Subsequently, the focus of the poem’s perspective shifts. The speaker takes note of the animals also involved along with the “reapers” in the harvesting process. He describes how the “Black horses drive a mower through the weeds” (5). Meanwhile, “a field rat” is “startled” by the mower and “squealing bleeds” (6). Once again, the speaker directly refers to his first-person perspective in the final lines of the poem as he describes the aftermath of the accident: “I see...