Wilderness

Need the words unspoken be said here

Under the red maples, in a vale of trees

Piercing the clay and rancid sodden leaves

Dyed with madder?

Or under the green cedars

On the hill’s saddle?

Let not a word fall on pale strawberry blossoms

Beneath the lynn tree’s vagrant whispering,

Or a syllable bleed on spikes of cinnamon fern,—

All speech made here will know an early withering.

In the cool stillness where shadow-flowers dance

Lean poplars will flaunt all thoughts that burn

Into futile words within a haughty wilderness.

All beauty here that trudges hills and skies

Is clothed in silence and in silence dies.