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Amy Lowell
In the brown water,
Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine,
Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds,
A pike dozed.
Lost among the shadows of stems
He lay unnoticed.
Suddenly he flicked his tail,
And a green-and-copper brightness
Ran under the water.
Out from under the reeds
Came the olive-green light,
And orange flashed up
Through the sun-thickened water.
So the fish passed across the pool,
Green and copper,
A darkness and a gleam,
with the lobster traps stacked
against the green fence,
under the old willow,
and it will be made of sea wrack
and sea foam, and painted the color of islands,
and flash in the light like a gull’s wing
in the morning,
and there will I wile my time,
lost to the world of plans and contingencies,
carefully sculpting my stories,
becoming a legend.
Yea! Yea! HAVE I FORGOTTEN BEAUTY?
The five petalled white cherry blossom
tinged with pink -- and the yellow stamen?
NAY:
I have become engrossed
with thy perfect body!
The length of your legs.
The solidity of your thighs.
The brightness of your eyes.
Your fingers. Hands.
BIG SIMPLE IDEAS
in
the
BOOK OF FLESH.
I'm a scholar.
Faint scent of pussywillows
The shadow of a lonely willow
Swings
Ghastly, ghastly;
The roads are lost
In the hoary-haired mists of eve ;
A strange green light in the distance
Drifts
As a wandering fay ;
I hear a wild cry
In the dark air,
In the stream,
In the stars.
Do you not hear the sighing of a willow in Japan,
(In Japan beyond, in Japan beyond)
In the voice of a wind searching the Sun lost,
For the old faces with memory in eyes ?
Do you not hear the sighing of a bamboo in Japan,
(In Japan beyond, in Japan beyond)
In the voice of a sea urging with the night,
For the old dreams of a twilight tale ?
Do you not hear the sighing of a pine in Japan
(In Japan beyond, in Japan beyond)
In the voice of a river in quest of the Unknown,
For the old ages with gold in heart ?
Do you not hear the sighing of a reed in Japan,
(In Japan beyond, in Japan beyond)
In the voice of a bird who long ago flew away,
For the old peace with velvet-sandalled feet ?
I am among the careless dead
Who do not rise to see
Why I should hurry through their flowers
Beneath their willow tree,
Nor lift their hands from off their breasts
To beckon me.
But though I run so lightly through
The myrtle's rambling mass,
And though my feet step silently
Above the blowing grass.
And though they do not stir or speak —
They know I pass.
Willow in your April gown
Delicate and gleaming,
Do you mind in years gone by
All my dreaming?
Spring was like a call to me
That I could not answer,
I was chained to loneliness,
I, the dancer.
Willow, twinkling in the sun,
Still your leaves and hear me,
I can answer spring at last,
Love is near me!
It was April when you came
The first time to me,
And my first look in your eyes
Was like my first look at the sea.
We have been together
Four Aprils now
Watching for the green
On the swaying willow bough;
Yet whenever I turn
To your gray eyes over me,
It is as though I looked
For the first time at the sea.
You have put your two hands upon me, and your mouth,
You have said my name as a prayer.
Here where trees are planted by the water
I have watched your eyes, cleansed from regret,
And your lips, closed over all that love cannot say.
My mother remembers the agony of her womb
And long years that seemed to promise more than this.
She says, "You do not love me,
You do not want me,
You will go away."
In the country whereto I go
I shall not see the face of my friend
Nor her hair the color of sunburnt grasses;
Together we shall not find
The land on whose hills bends the new moon
In air traversed of birds.
By the pool of life
Willows are drooping tonight
I can see no stars.
What dances in the water?
O my clouds dripping with tears.
When I am dead, withhold, I pray, your blooming
legacy;
Beneath the willows did I bide, and they should
cover me;
I longed for light and fragrance, and I sought
them far and near,
O, it would grieve me utterly, to find them on
my bier!
There was a time when Mother Nature made
My soul's sun, and my soul's shade.
A cloud in the sky could take away
The song in my heart for all day,
And a little lark in a willow-tree
Would mean happiness to me.
My moods would mirror all her whims ;
Trees were my strength : their limbs, my limbs.
But, oh, my mother tortured me,
Blowing with wind, and sighing with sea.
I flamed, I withered, I blossomed, I sang,
With her I suffered pang for pang,
Until I said: "I will grow my own tree
Where no natural wind will bother me."
And I grew me a willow of my own heart's strength,
With my will for its width, and my wish for its length :