You shadow and flame,
You interchange,
You death in the game!
Now I gather you up,
Now I put you back
Like a poppy in its cup.
And so, you are a maid
Again, my darling, but new,
Unafraid.
My love, my blossom, a child
Almost! The flower in the bud
Again, undefiled.
And yet, a woman, knowing
All, good, evil, both
In one blossom blowing.
Fasten black eyes on me.
I ask nothing of you under the peach trees,
Fasten your black eyes in my gray with the spear of a storm.
The air under the peach blossoms is a haze of pink.
Blossoms of babies
Blinking their stories
Come soft
On the dusk and the babble ;
Little red gamblers,
Handfuls that slept in the dust.
Summers of rain,
Winters of drift.
Tell off the years ;
And they go back
Who came soft —
Back to the sod,
To silence and dust;
Gray gamblers,
Handfuls again.
Paula is digging and shaping the loam of a salvia,
Scarlet Chinese talker of summer.
Two petals of crabapple blossom blow fallen in Paula's hair,
And fluff of white from a cottonwood.
I saw a woman stand
Under the seas of bloom,
Under the waves of colour and light,
The showery snow and rose of the odorous trees
That made a glory of earth.
She stood where the petals fell,
And her hands were on her breast,
And her lips were touched with wonder,
And her eyes were full of pain--
For pure she was, and young,
And it was Spring!
Fugitive, wistful,
Pausing at edge of her going,
Autumn the maiden turns,
Leans to the earth with ineffable
Gesture. Ah, more than
Spring's skies her skies shine
Tender, and frailer
Bloom than plum-bloom or almond
Lies on her hillsides, her fields
Misted, faint-flushing. Ah, lovelier
Is her refusal than
Yielding, who pauses with grave
Backward smiling, with light
Unforgettable touch of
Fingers withdrawn. . . Pauses, lo
Vanishes . . . fugitive, wistful. . . .