(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Like a huge Python, winding round and round  
   The rugged trunk, indented deep with scars,  
   Up to its very summit near the stars,  
A creeper climbs, in whose embraces bound  
   No other tree could live. But gallantly        
The giant wears the scarf, and flowers are hung  
In crimson clusters all the boughs among,  
   Whereon all day are gathered bird and bee;  
And oft at nights the garden overflows  
With one sweet song that seems to have no close,          
Sung darkling from our tree, while men repose.  

When first my casement is wide open thrown  
   At dawn, my eyes delighted on it rest;  
   Sometimes, and most in winter,—on its crest  
A gray baboon sits statue-like alone        
   Watching the sunrise; while on lower boughs  
His puny offspring leap about and play;  
And far and near kokilas hail the day;  
   And to their pastures wend our sleepy cows;  
And in the shadow, on the broad tank cast          
By that hoar tree, so beautiful and vast,  
The water-lilies spring, like snow enmassed.  

But not because of its magnificence  
   Dear is the Casuarina to my soul:  
   Beneath it we have played; though years may roll,        
O sweet companions, loved with love intense,  
   For your sakes, shall the tree be ever dear.  
Blent with your images, it shall arise  
In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes!  
   What is that dirge-like murmur that I hear        
Like the sea breaking on a shingle-beach?  
It is the tree’s lament, an eerie speech,  
That haply to the unknown land may reach.  

Unknown, yet well-known to the eye of faith!  
   Ah, I have heard that wail far, far away        
   In distant lands, by many a sheltered bay,  
When slumbered in his cave the water-wraith  
   And the waves gently kissed the classic shore  
Of France or Italy, beneath the moon,  
When earth lay trancèd in a dreamless swoon:      
   And every time the music rose,—before  
Mine inner vision rose a form sublime,  
Thy form, O Tree, as in my happy prime  
I saw thee, in my own loved native clime.  

Therefore I fain would consecrate a lay        
   Unto thy honor, Tree, beloved of those  
   Who now in blessed sleep, for aye, repose,
Dearer than life to me, alas! were they!  
   Mayst thou be numbered when my days are done  
With deathless trees—like those in Borrowdale,        
Under whose awful branches lingered pale  
   “Fear, trembling Hope, and Death, the skeleton,  
And Time the shadow;” and though weak the verse  
That would thy beauty fain, oh fain rehearse,  
May Love defend thee from Oblivion’s curse.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention 
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate 
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

On my desk is a photograph of you
taken by the woman who loved you then.

In some photos her shadow falls
in the foreground. In this one, 
her body is not that far from yours.

Did you hold your head that way
because she loved it?

She is not invisible, not
my enemy, 
nor even the past. 
I think
I love the things she loved.

Of all your old photographs, I wanted
this one for its becoming. I think
you were starting
to turn your head a little, 
your eyes looking slightly to the side.

Was this the beginning of leaving?

I like being a mammal, the only animal who
weeps, sadness a foreplay between sodium
and water. I admire my drooping belly for
waxing and waning like a moon, stretching
over my growing son and then gathering
back together like theater curtains. My ring
finger is happy to wear a different weight
these days. Although my marriage splintered
like my parents’ did, I believe vows can make
some people open like a peony, a hundred
vulnerable layers lying against one another.

I want to rejoice that I’m finally learning how
to French braid my own hair, but it is strange
to be an animal who can remember bubblegum
sunsets, clotheslines pinned with drying flowers,
winter’s generosity of stars. All that beauty
staining my pupils makes me weep, which
makes me remember someone studied
the fractals of tears under a microscope,
so much stunning geometry spilling from me
at each onion and stubbed toe and heartbreak.
My tears’ chemistry–a marvel, a miracle even.

I used to want my heart to be an ocean, not
this river-heart eddying in the slightest pain,
but a gorgeous boss of an organ that could
contain everything, even secrets. In another life,
I might have married someone with a fishpond
heart like my father, so reliable in its seasons.
In this life I married my mother’s Mariana’s Trench
heart with its pressure, its deforming gravity.

I went nearly a decade without crying, but once
I understood my heart would always need me
to swaddle it in music and promise to be kind,
it let me weep again, whole wet pillowcases
full of grief. I bought a lachrymatory to catch
all my splendid tears and save them, because
I like that I am a messy animal full of melancholy
with working knees and a toes that crack when
I walk downstairs, weak hands and a softening
chin that makes me see my mother in the mirror,
crying her famous tears, this time saying
she loves what I’ve done with my hair.

Love, leave me like the light,
    The gently passing day;
We would not know, but for the night,
    When it has slipped away.

Go quietly; a dream,
    When done, should leave no trace
That it has lived, except a gleam
    Across the dreamer's face.

1

I tore from a limb fruit that had lost its green.
My hands were warmed by the heat of an apple
Fire red and humming.
I bit sweet power to the core.
How can I say what it was like?
The taste! The taste undid my eyes
And led me far from the gardens planted for a child
To wildernesses deeper than any master’s call.

2

Now these cool hands guide what they once caressed;
Lips forget what they have kissed.
My eyes now pool their light
Better the summit to see.

3

I would do it all over again:
Be the harbor and set the sail,
Loose the breeze and harness the gale,
Cherish the harvest of what I have been.
Better the summit to scale.
Better the summit to be.

            I never knew what to name from my life and what to hide 
to conceal in another word

            what to give to someone and what to keep but found happiness 
suspended in the moment between touch

            and judgment like how when my friend wrapped a white shirt 
around his head and it fell to his shoulders

            he said I want you to imagine this is how long my hair is 
or that day the sound of the schoolbell

            became cool as it washed through the cornfield and Rachel 
and I were leaning on the fence

            we must have been seven and her shirt had a bundle of red 
cherries she scratched and said See

            you can smell cherries Here and she leaned toward me 
and pressing my head to her collarbone

            closing my eyes I felt the branches opening within me 
I pulled away and said Yes you really can

            and the feeling is hesitant ecstasy a will to change 
that derives from our inability

            to change ourselves to make a bowl of cherries appear 
or to beg our fathers to let our hair grow forever 

’T is time this heart indifferent
     To love so long,
Should rise from slumber impotent,
     And stroll among
The gardens that are heaven sent.

The butterflies’ unholy quest
     From vase to pot
For wine within the petal’s nest,
     Will guide me not
As it profanely guides the rest.

But it is time this heart so long
     Indifferent
For years and years, should stroll along
     Where Cupid went
One day, and listened to his song.

My heart a garden is, a garden walled;
And in the wide white spaces near the gates
Grow tall and showy flowers, sun-loving flowers,
Where they are seen of every passer-by;
Who straightway faring on doth bear the tale
How bright my garden is and filled with sun.

But there are shaded walks far from the gates,
So far the passer-by can never see,
Where violets grow for thoughts of those afar,
And rue for memories of vanished days,
And sweet forget-me-nots to bid me think

With tenderness,—lest I grow utter cold
And hard as women grow who never weep.
And when come times I fear that Love is dead
And Sorrow rules as King the world's white ways,
I go with friends I love among these beds.
Where friend and flower do speak alike to me,
Sometimes with silences, sometimes with words.

'Tis then I thank my God for those high walls
That shut the friends within, the world without,
That passers-by may only see the sun.
That friends I love may share the quiet shade.

          The path runs straight between the flowering rows,
           A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom,
           Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room
          With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose.
          ’T is reckless prodigality which throws
           Into the night these wafts of rich perfume
           Which sweep across the garden like a plume.
          Over the trees a single bright star glows.
           Dear garden of my childhood, here my years
          Have run away like little grains of sand;
           The moments of my life, its hopes and fears
          Have all found utterance here, where now I stand;
           My eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears,
          You are my home, do you not understand?

Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

X
Who will tell the sun about my land
my harried medlar tree
my springtime without nervures 
my helpful hand
Who will recount my rootless
garden 
and my door open
to all comers
my night of faraway sounds

my wheat that absorbs
the hours 

Who will cure me
of my sequestration 
and sweet secret
—my monochrome dream

my space gone gray at the temples 
the barter of my frenzy

the slumber at the edge
of my well of fever 

My steppe with an abundance of laughter 
Perhaps it would be enough . . .
But I watch
time passing