Summer comes to the stricken earth.
Lays clement fingers of bud and leaf
On broken hedge and field's brown dearth
And the bare hills' rocky grief;
Brings her comfort of May and June,
Pours on red wounds the blackbird's tune,
Bids with her gallant, imperious green
Anger and vengeance and fevered hate
Abate.
Deep in my heart is a faded pain
None knows:
Summer, put there a rose
Red as its one-time scar!
Bid it flame to a grief again,
Bid it sing like the morning star —
Shining song of a fresh young woe
We scar the earth with dreadful engin’ry;
She takes us to her bosom at the last;
Hiding our hate with love, who cannot see
Of any child the faults; and holds us fast.
We’ll wait in quiet till our passion’s past.
The listless beauty of the hour
When snow fell on the apple trees
And the wood-ash gathered in the fire
And we faced our first miseries.
Then the sweeping sunshine of noon
When the mountains like chariot cars
Were ranked to blue battle--and you and I
Counted our scars.
And then in a strange, grey hour
We lay mouth to mouth, with your face
Under mine like a star on the lake,
And I covered the earth, and all space.
The silent, drifting hours
Of morn after morn
And night drifting up to the night
Yet no pathway worn.
You came from the Aztecs
With a copper on your fore-arms
Tawnier than a sunset
Saying good-by to an even river.
And I said, you remember,
Those fore-arms of yours
Were finer than bronzes
And you were glad.
It was tears
And a path west and a home-going when I asked
Why there were scars of worn gold
Where a man's ring was fixed once
On your third finger.
And I call you
To come back before the days are longer.