Home From Abroad

Far-fetched with tales of other worlds and ways,

My skin well-oiled with wines of the Levant,

I set my face into a filial smile

To greet the pale, domestic kiss of Kent.

But shall I never learn? That gawky girl,

Recalled so primly in my foreign thoughts,

Becomes again the green-haired queen of love

Whose wanton form dilates as it delights.

Her rolling tidal landscape floods the eye

And drowns Chianti in a dusky stream;

The flower-flecked grasses swim with simple horses,

The hedges choke with roses fat as cream.

So do I breathe the hayblown airs of home,

And watch the sea-green elms drip birds and shadows,

And as the twilight nets the plunging sun

My heart’s keel slides to rest among the meadows.