For a violin, a flute and an echo.
The stride of a girl
Has caressed the lane,
Has passed through the gate.
In the park at Nevons
The grasshoppers sleep.
White frost and hailstones
Introduce autumn.
And the wind decides
Whether leaves will fall
Or the nests first.
*
Who showed him this face,
This wide stare, this spillage,
This swaying as of a jellyfish
Above deep time.
It is like the vervain
Each summer cut to the ground,
The season of earth’s seeding.
*
The window and the park,
The plane tree and the roof
Discharged loads of bees,
From pollen to honeycomb
From the swarm to the flower.
A free gliding bird
Hovering for his food
Flung down words
Like a hearty sailor.
When the bed closed
On my whole wearied body,
Fair eyes turned
From their work to me.
The needle glittered;
And I felt the thread
In the treasure of fingers
That edged the batiste.
The years of growing,
And no father for my arm!
Spreading all her gifts,
The beloved stream
Came to my need.
Poplars and guitars
Revived at evening
To celebrate this marvel
In which heaven had no part.
A prairie reaper
Rising, bending,
Roused the swallows,
Endlessly silent.
Its keel stuck
In the slime of the islet,
A boat lay dead.
The hour between school and night,
The bramble gripping them,
A mixture of rascals
Ran, cruel and deaf.
The mist veered over them,
Icy and maternal.
On the bamboo of the jungles
They had been modeled,
Dear bobbing reeds!
*
The invalid gardener smiles
At the thought of the lost tools,
Of the dead wood multiplying.
*
By the will of a dead man,
Has crushed and destroyed
The lawn and the trees,
The sleeping idleness,
The shadowy space
Of my park at Nevons.
Since one must give up
What one cannot keep,
Which becomes something else
Whether or no the heart wills—
Roundly forget it,
Then beat the bushes
To seek without finding
That which must cure us
Of the unknown ills
We bear with us everywhere.
[WSM]