Sour Grapes Part 5

MEMORY OF APRIL

You say love is this, love is that: Poplar ta.s.sels, willow tendrils the wind and the rain comb, tinkle and drip, tinkle and drip-- branches drifting apart. Hagh!

Love has not even visited this country.

EPITAPH

An old willow with hollow branches slowly swayed his few high bright tendrils and sang:

Love is a young green willow s.h.i.+mmering at the bare wood's edge.

DAISY

The dayseye hugging the earth in August, ha! Spring is gone down in purple, weeds stand high in the corn, the rainbeaten furrow is clotted with sorrel and crabgra.s.s, the branch is black under the heavy ma.s.s of the leaves-- The sun is upon a slender green stem ribbed lengthwise.

He lies on his back-- it is a woman also-- he regards his former majesty and round the yellow center, split and creviced and done into minute flowerheads, he sends out his twenty rays--a little and the wind is among them to grow cool there!

One turns the thing over in his hand and looks at it from the rear: brownedged, green and pointed scales armor his yellow.

But turn and turn, the crisp petals remain brief, translucent, greenfastened, barely touching at the edges: blades of limpid seash.e.l.l.

PRIMROSE

Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!

It is not a color.

It is summer!

It is the wind on a willow, the lap of waves, the shadow under a bush, a bird, a bluebird, three herons, a dead hawk rotting on a pole-- Clear yellow!

It is a piece of blue paper in the gra.s.s or a threecl.u.s.ter of green walnuts swaying, children playing croquet or one boy fis.h.i.+ng, a man swinging his pink fists as he walks-- It is ladysthumb, forgetmenots in the ditch, moss under the f.l.a.n.g.e of the carrail, the wavy lines in split rock, a great oaktree-- It is a disinclination to be five red petals or a rose, it is a cl.u.s.ter of birdsbreast flowers on a red stem six feet high, four open yellow petals above sepals curled backward into reverse spikes-- Tufts of purple gra.s.s spot the green meadow and clouds the sky.

QUEEN-ANN'S-LACE

Her body is not so white as anemony petals nor so smooth--nor so remote a thing. It is a field of the wild carrot taking the field by force; the gra.s.s does not raise above it.

Here is no question of whiteness, white as can be, with a purple mole at the center of each flower.

Each flower is a hand's span of her whiteness. Wherever his hand has lain there is a tiny purple blemish. Each part is a blossom under his touch to which the fibres of her being stem one by one, each to its end, until the whole field is a white desire, empty, a single stem, a cl.u.s.ter, flower by flower, a pious wish to whiteness gone over-- or nothing.

GREAT MULLEN

One leaves his leaves at home being a mullen and sends up a lighthouse to peer from: I will have my way, yellow--A mast with a lantern, ten fifty, a hundred, smaller and smaller as they grow more--Liar, liar, liar!

You come from her! I can smell djer-kiss on your clothes. Ha, ha! you come to me, you--I am a point of dew on a gra.s.s-stem.

Why are you sending heat down on me from your lantern--You are cowdung, a dead stick with the bark off. She is squirting on us both. She has had her hand on you!--Well?--She has defiled ME.--Your leaves are dull, thick and hairy.--Every hair on my body will hold you off from me. You are a dungcake, birdlime on a fencerail.-- I love you, straight, yellow finger of G.o.d pointing to--her!

Liar, broken weed, duncake, you have-- I am a cricket waving his antenae and you are high, grey and straight. Ha!

WAITING

When I am alone I am happy.

The air is cool. The sky is flecked and splashed and wound with color. The crimson phalloi of the sa.s.safra.s.s leaves hang crowded before me in shoals on the heavy branches.

When I reach my doorstep I am greeted by the happy shrieks of my children and my heart sinks.

I am crushed.

Are not my children as dear to me as falling leaves or must one become stupid to grow older?

It seems much as if Sorrow had tripped up my heels.

Let us see, let us see!

What did I plan to say to her when it should happen to me as it has happened now?

THE HUNTER

In the flashes and black shadows of July the days, locked in each other's arms, seem still so that squirrels and colored birds go about at ease over the branches and through the air.

Where will a shoulder split or a forehead open and victory be?

Nowhere.

Both sides grow older.

And you may be sure not one leaf will lift itself from the ground and become fast to a twig again.

ARRIVAL