me...
But there was time...
And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of the mountain,
staring into the abyss...
I do not know how long...
I could not count the hours, they ran so fast
Like little bare-foot urchins--shaking my hands away...
But I remember
Somewhere water trickled like a thin severed vein...
And a wind came out of the grass,
Touching me gently, tentatively, like a paw.

As the night grew
The gray cloud that had covered the sky like sackcloth
Fell in ashen folds about the hills,
Like hooded virgins, pulling their cloaks about them...
There must have been a spent moon,
For the Tall One's veil held a shimmer of silver...

That too I remember...
And the tenderly rocking mountain
Silence
And beating stars...

Dawn
Lay like a waxen hand upon the world,
And folded hills
Broke into a sudden wonder of peaks, stemming clear and cold,
Till the Tall One bloomed like a lily,
Flecked with sun,
Fine as a golden pollen--
It seemed a wind might blow it from the snow.

I smelled the raw sweet essences of things,
And heard spiders in the leaves
And ticking of little feet,
As tiny creatures came out of their doors
To see God pouring light into his star...

... It seemed life held
No future and no past but this...

And I too got up stiffly from the earth,
And held my heart up like a cup...

THE GARDEN

Bountiful Givers,
I look along the years
And see the flowers you threw...
Anemones
And sprigs of gray
Sparse heather of the rocks,
Or a wild violet
Or daisy of a daisied field...
But each your best.

I might have worn them on my breast
To wilt in the long day...
I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase
And watched each petal sallowing...
I might have held them so--mechanically--
Till the wind winnowed all the leaves
And left upon my hands
A little smear of dust.

Instead
I hid them in the soft warm loam
Of a dim shadowed place...
Deep
In a still cool grotto,
Lit only by the memories of stars
And the wide and luminous eyes
Of dead poets
That love me and that I love...
Deep... deep...
Where none may see--not even ye who gave--
About my soul your garden beautiful.

UNDER-SONG

There is music in the strong
Deep-throated bush,
Whisperings of song
Heard in the leaves' hush--
Ballads of the trees
In tongues unknown-