Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones / Are sharpening scythes.
-- Speaker (Lines 1 – 2)

Importance: These lines open “Reapers" and are important because they establish the poem’s main subject – the “Black reapers” preparing for the harvest. These lines also establish early on an undercurrent of violence the remains throughout the poem, through the image of the reapers “sharpening scythes,” which in addition to being tools for the harvest are also a means of causing violence with blades. Therefore, the reapers gain another connotation other than the association with harvest work – that of being a grim reaper, which does come to fruition with the callous injury of the field rat at the end of the poem.

I see them place the hones / In their hip pockets as a thing that’s done, / And start their silent swinging, one by one.
-- Speaker (Lines 2 – 4)

Importance: These lines near the beginning of the poem establish a sense of fatalism...