I met a lady from the South who said(You won’t believe she said it, but she said it):‘None of my family ever worked, or hadA thing to sell.’ I don’t suppose the workMuch matters. You may work for all of me.I’ve seen the time I’ve had to work myself.The having anything to sell is whatIs…
As near a paradise as it can beAnd not melt snow or start a dormant tree.It lifts existence on a plane of snowOne level higher than the earth below,One level nearer heaven overhead,And last year’s berries shining scarlet red.It lifts a gaunt luxuriating beastWhere he can stretch and hold his highest featOn some wild apple…
Was but the mocking echo of his ownFrom some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.Some morning from the boulder-broken beachHe would cry out on life, that what it wantsIs not its own love back in copy speech,But counter-love, original response.And nothing ever came of what he criedUnless it was the embodiment that crashedIn the cliff’s talus…
With an eye always lifted toward the west,Where an irregular, sun-bordered cloudDarkly advanced with a perpetual daggerFlickering across its bosom. SuddenlyOne helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground,Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed.The town-bred farmer failed to understand.What was there wrong?Something you said just now.What did I say?About our taking pains.To cock the…
Forever trying the window latchOf the room where they slept.The tireless but ineffectual handsThat with every futile passMade the great tree seem as a little birdBefore the mystery of glass!It never had been inside the room,And only one of the twoWas afraid in an oft-repeated dreamOf what the tree might do.
Like dove wings on a figure on a tombTo see, if in a dream they brought of you,I might not have the chance I missed in lifeThrough some delay, and call you to your faceFirst soldier, and then poet, and then both,Who died a soldier-poet of your race.I meant, you meant, that nothing should remainUnsaid…
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.He says that leaves are old and that for flowersMid-summer is to spring as one to ten.He says the early petal-fall is past,When pear and cherry bloom went down in showersOn sunny days a moment overcast;And comes that other fall we name the fall.He says the highway dust…
But one straight, narrow pathwayThat was not overgrown.And to this beauteous gardenHe brought mankind to live,And said: ‘To you, my children,These lovely flowers I give.Prune ye my vines and fig trees,With care my flowerets tend,But keep the pathway openYour home is at the end.’Then came another master,Who did not love mankind,And planted on the pathwayGold…
Reminds me of all that can happen to harmAn orchard away at the end of the farmAll winter, cut off by a hill from the house.I don’t want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,I don’t want it dreamily nibbled for browseBy deer, and I don’t want it budded by grouse.(If certain it wouldn’t be idle…
