My dear, I wonder if before the end
You ever thought about a children’ s game —
I’ m sure you must have played it too — in which
You ran along a narrow garden wall
Pretending it to be a mountain ledge
So steep a snowy darkness fell away
On either side to deeps invisible;
And when you felt your balance being lost
You jumped because you feared to fall, and thought
The women bow and flutter in the field.
The grain lies white with wind in the wide shadow.
Summer is dark, as in the ancient time.
This fair cloud that blooms in the northwest
Has darkened now, as in the ancient time,
And clouds are still at dawn on the soft mountains.
Husks after harvest we shall leave for rain
And our heels’ trace in the loam:
The stir of boughs has warned us,
Fruit in the grass reminds us...
When he had suckled there, he began
to grow: first, he was an infant in her arms,
but soon, drinking and drinking at the sweet
milk she could not keep from filling her,
from pouring into his ravenous mouth,
and filling again, miraculous pitcher, mercy
feeding its own extinction... soon he was
From the beginning, the egg cradled in pebbles,
The drive thick with fledglings, to the known last
Riot of the senses, is only a short pass.
Earth to be forked over is more patient,
Bird hungers more, flower dies sooner.
I understand, sure, hygiene, these days, if you're not paying attention,
with all these sicknesses, you think I'm not aware?
I'm not saying not to bathe, are you crazy?
you don't want to wash? I'm just saying to not go overboard,
because there's clean, that's fine, but not clean and shiny,
it's just that people now, bath foams, bath salts,
a bar of soap's not good enough,
no, instead, sometimes, by washing too much,
some things even get lost, the other day,
there was one lady, I didn't know her,
From dreams, where thought infancy's maze runs mad,
To reason, that heaven-lighted lamp in man,
Once more I wake; and at the destin'd hour,
Punctual as lovers to the moment sworn,
I keep my assignation with my woe.
TIR'D Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
He, like the world his ready visit pays
Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes;
Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.
