Our fifty-year-old linden trees
have put on another sign—
in smooth weather a blizzard
of red snowflakes, red cockerels.
In this landscape of untended woods
the oddly regular pattern
of young pines, flowerless
but trembling, bristles and turns
over a floor of field
where their trunks are drilled
into an avenue. The navy blue
police with their white armbands
without the number of life
square their fists off the outlawed
pavement. Sea stings the wall bearing
the mural and shallow-floods the rice.
The decayed sun closes its eyes,
a golden wash-beetle:
I’ll praise the girl’s slow looks
with the yellow of the gorse.