For Louise’s visitors’ book

Trees rising straight without the least transition

a woman tall and unexpected like the trees those

elegant and witty scented pines

terrace after terrace falling to the seas

two seas

the one hemmed in with castles jetties moles

a swarm of pink-roofed houses over there, boats swimming, bathers, sharks

domestic contemplative sea: but to the right

untouched the seven million waves to Africa.

Three hundred suns the tramontane

three hundred moons and Venus and the Pleiades

weave the year through the needles of the pines

the turning years the centuries.