Les plus lus ▸
D. H. Lawrence
The big mountains sit still in the afternoon light
Shadows in their lap;
The bees roll round in the wild-thyme with delight.
We sitting here among the cranberries
So still in the gap
Of rock, distilling our memories
Are sinners! Strange! The bee that blunders
Against me goes off with a laugh.
A squirrel cocks his head on the fence, and wonders
What about sin?--For, it seems
The mountains have
No shadow of us on their snowy forehead of dreams
As they ought to have. They rise above us
Dreaming
For ever. One even might think that they love us.
Little red cranberries cheek to cheek,
I shall return again; I shall return
To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes
At golden noon the forest fires burn,
Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies.
I shall return to loiter by the streams
That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses,
And realize once more my thousand dreams
Of waters rushing down the mountain passes.
I shall return to hear the fiddle and fife
Of village dances, dear delicious tunes
That stir the hidden depths of native life,
Stray melodies of dim remembered runes.
I shall return, I shall return again,
To ease my mind of long, long years of pain.
March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale,
Why the deil dinna ye march forward in order!
March, march, Eskdale and Liddesdale,
All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the Border.
Many a banner spread,
Flutters above your head,
Many a crest that is famous in story.
Mount and make ready then,
Sons of the mountain glen,
Fight for the Queen and our old Scottish glory.
Come from the hills where your hirsels are grazing,
Come from the glen of the buck and the roe;
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing,
Come with the buckler, the lance, and the bow.
Trumpets are sounding,
War-steeds are bounding,
Listen, listen, Mary mine,
To the whisper of the Apennine,
It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow
By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread
On the dim starlight then is spread,
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,
Shrouding...
We were playing hide-&-seek. At the last moment,
I dove under a black rubberized tarp
that had been lying out back for several months.
I heard her finish the count & come looking,
rounding the corner of the house on rapid feet.
The tarp rustled from my heavy breathing.
A beetle made a racket
burrowing out from under from my right ear,
which was pressed against the ground.
She ran past, the beetle wiggled free
& everything grew still.
After a while, I heard the approach of slow footfalls.
This time, I held my breath as if
my life depended on it. The steps came up
to the edge of the tarp & stopped.
“Nobody under there,” I heard her say.
the peak stands
alone as a drowsy god
against my plain
and ready road
High in the mountains
one hayfield remains uncut.
A doe’s ear twitches.
Bed of the Dry Fork
scored for tic-tac-toe: water fills all
the squares with zero.
Camp at the woods’ edge.
Morning sun brings rhododendrons
into your tent.
Steep banks, big boulders,
pools – everything but otters
in Otter Creek.
At Dolly Sods
when the wind slows down, it’s delicious:
wild azaleas.
When they cut the forest,
painting the peak like a peak
some sage for the bedside
how to have that peak
now making up the plain
I will tell my heart
to change lodgings
Of all the things our ink
signed away,
the peak comes
back in the evening
to rest.
and the deer came
on long legs between the trees
and clashed antlers with a sound
old and dry as the wind
gnats danced as if
summer had returned
for one day only
everything must go
through a gray mist that may
have been in my head
i measured the mountain
with my body pacing it out
i walked among birches
nothing but blank pages
overtook milkweed
giving birth to clouds
buzzing on the autumn mountain
an amber alert
a child gone missing
in the middle of my daydream
railroad workers 400 feet below
pause and look at their phones
every morning now
it’s a different landscape
i go home and cut my hair
the missing girl is found
two notes from a wren
get lodged in my inner ear
in the real world
hills are for cemeteries
from a distance the gravestones
might as well be stumps
or teeth waiting for the other
jaw to descend
a woman lets
her rottweiler run
a gravedigger operates
a small backhoe
i browse the headstones
as if they were spines of books
GIVEN says one and i feel guilty
for killing time
try not to look over
at the mountain