This was the Easter when it rained so little That all the olive groves were grimed with dust Along the road. The sapless twigs were brittle, Ceding, like wires yielding glint to rust,
Their hoard of stored up sun and all their greenness— Except one crest, whose brightness drained its root. Here clay had pushed beyond all clay's uncleanness And then, exhausted, withered without fruit.
Peter Viereck gives us a single scene: olive groves during a dry Easter, everything coated in road dust. The branches are so brittle they seem to be giving up their last greenness, the way wire gives up its shine as it rusts. The speaker watches this with a cold, steady eye, and the mood is one of slow depletion rather than sudden disaster.
The second stanza narrows to one treetop that was brighter than the rest, and that brightness turns out to be a cost: it drained the root beneath it. The image of clay pushing "beyond all clay's uncleanness" suggests something earthbound straining to rise above its own nature, then collapsing, spent and fruitless.
Because the poem is set at Easter, a season of resurrection, the drought feels pointed. Nothing here is renewed. The poem seems to hint that reaching too hard for brilliance can leave you empty, but it leaves that thought unspoken, letting the dry landscape carry it.