How are the stanzas related in the poem, "Summer Farm" by Norman MacCaig?

To
appreciate a literary work, it helps to understand the writer.  Norman MacCaig author of the
poem, "Summer Farm," led a life of controversy.  Born in Scotland, he began his
professional life as primary school teacher. During World War II,  MacCaig was classified as a
conscientious objector but served a term in prison for refusing to fight.  Throughout his life,
he was a professed pacifist. His writing career failed to advance because of his political
stance and imprisonment.  Eventually, he found a place in the university setting where he became
First Writer in Resident at Edinburgh University.

In his poetry, MacCaig
sought precise observations, creative wit, and clarity. These attributes are found in
"Summer Farm."  The poem follows a rather simple pattern:  four stanzas with two
couplets per stanza.  The poet uses similes and metaphors to describe thesetting of the farm on
a lazy summer day with an abundance of nature. Furthermore, he usesto paint each individual
scene:

...tame lightnings lie...

...Green as glass..

...dives up again into the dizzy blue.

In the first stanza,  his similes convey the images of straw lying
around like idle lightning to water in horse trough the color of green grass. From there, he
gives the humorous  image of nine duck waddling along in two rows.  The reader has to imagine is
there a row of four and five ducks, six, and three, or what.  It is a clever way to entice the
reader into the scene.

In the second stanza, again the poet uses humor when
he describes a a hen staring at nothing and
then she picks it up and eats it.  Wonder what it was?  Then,  the reader is given a beautiful
image of a swallow free falling,  then fluttering and soaring up into the bright blue
sky.

The reader is jolted awake with the introduction of the narrator (I). He
is lying on the grass trying not to think about anything.  If he did think,  he seems fearful of
where his thoughts would take him. 

I like, not thinking,
in the cool, soft grass,

Afraid of where a thought might take
me... 

As he relates this, an armor faced grasshopper
unfolds  its legs and spreads out.  Interestingly, a second reading implies that the grasshopper
is the boy, figuratively masked to the outside world, unfolding wanting to spread his own
wings.

This grasshopper with plated face

Unfolds his legs and finds himself in space.

The
fourth stanza finds the narrator stands waiting on time.  He has many sides or selves.  Who is
the real person? He would like to look down into the farm. To him, the farm is the world,  and 
he finds himself in the center of it.

The narrator refers to the metaphysical
hand.  The metaphysical mind concerns itself with the explanation of nature's existence in the
world. It relates to questions that cannot be answered in factual terms.  Maybe like the
metaphysical world, the adolescent narrator finds himself asking the questions so many teenagers
ask:

Who am I?; What is my purpose?; and Where am I
going?

The teen feels that he is the center of his
universe.  Even thought the narrator says that he is thinking of nothing, he able to see precise
details of his world.  The most powerful lines of this poem summarize the search for himself in
this detailed world:

Self under self, a pile of selves I
stand...

Farm within farm, and in the centre, me.