Before this house a poplar grows
Well versed in dowsing, I suppose,
But how it sighs! And every night
A boy in black, a girl in white
Beyond the brightness of my bed
Appear, and not a word is said.
On coated chair and coatless chair
They sit, one here, the other there.
I do not care to make a scene:
I read a glossy magazine.
He props upon his slender knee
A dwarfed and potted poplar tree.
And she-she seems to hold a dim
Hand mirror with an ivory rim
Framing a lawn, and her, and me
Under the prototypic tree,
Before a pillared porch, last seen
In July, nineteen seventeen.
This is the silver lining of
Pathetic fallacies: the sough
Of Populus that taps at last
Not water but the author’s past.
And note: nothing is ever said.
I read a magazine in bed
Or the Home Book of Verse; and note:
This is my shirt, that is my coat.
But frailer seers I am told
Get up to rearrange a fold.