Do you not know, O speech, how
the buds beneath you are folded?
I.
Snow, melting, leaves the landscape pied;
waking, in vacancy like a dream, withdraws
the cloth of sleep; the false earth of winter
recedes, is dried, on the dead grass, the merging green;
white, unthawed, along the drains, marks
the conjectural forking, down-gathering
of a river. Bulked at troughs, cattle feed
in the provisional enclosure of the farmer’s mind.
Flocks birth in the female barns. Green
fevers in the black woods. The wind, now,
makes purpose of its accidents, becoming mild;
the weather’s dispassionate benevolence,
returning, stirs the mind again
to the ancient perilous advancement. Stripped
of the old cumulus of growths, cessations,
dreams, the house completes its seasonal closure,
having forestalled the winter, sheltering
as needful, its divisive entrances armed
against cold; having held a compacted light
tokening, in excess of necessity, joy:
at the window’s interior the scarlet bloom
of tulips has burned and glowed in the reflected
light of snow. The inward and outward house,
containment of that gentleness, and its defense,
is continent of the intellect, venturing
with its dreams into the weather’s judgment.
The young spring, returning, turns
the transparency of windows outward;
forked cherry branches figure the barren glass,
unleaved. We prepare this vacancy a little
for the coming of spring; the tree is cut back
for a fuller blooming, heavier fruit.
This waking wakes, advances to a new
envisionment, the old renewal of desire.
The mind lays claim to its summer,
dreams a perfect ripening, weighted harvest,
in the sun’s cruel beneficence, foreshadowing
harsher culminations, sterner quittances.
Waking is a leaf, a hand, a light—envisioning
white hands among foliage, red fruit, gathering.
II.
It’s a weather of engines,
also, into which spring comes
—among the sounds of traffic
at the roadside, where bloom
the yellow first jonquils;
a drift of snow melted there
a week ago—now it’s
just the memory of snow
draws back from the yellow
cup-lips. The traffic goes by,
the engines unwearying
as weather, gathering places,
tires pelting the asphalt,
moving to destinations
each way; the jonquils
bloom in their silence
and yellow. It’s the wind
that stirs them, the wind at large
over the hill now becoming
green under the heavy weather
of March and the weather of engines;
the hill leans back to the root
of the wind, the flowerheads
lean away; having come a long
journey, unbroken, the wind
is voluble and strong, taking
its hurdles, surrounding the
stolid fenceposts along the roadway,
crossing the stream of traffic
which crosses the wind.
The color of the jonquils
has to do with the weather
of March—a cool yellow,
receptive of the smallest
light, the frailest warmth;
and has to do, by its silence,
purely, with the sounds
of engines—acceptive; the plant
dares its bloom above ground
to be lovely, or trampled.
The life in it is its motive.
Wakened and touched
by the thin yellow of jonquils,
the house stands in the cross-grain
of wind and the roadway, in transversed
distances comprehending cities
—approached, approaching.
The house stands in a vision
of journeys bearing recognitions
toward it; and in all degrees
recognizes and is recognized
by who comes to it, and who passes.
The house and the city, though
the bulk of a continent balks
between them, have to do
with one another; the knowledge
of one is a knowledge of the other,
acknowledges the other.
In the same dark wherein
the periled jonquils remain
—and the traffic beats on
between cities, continuing
into the tunnel of headlights
parting the embankments, entering
distance as by the force of light
blooming, entering the violable
blossoming of the desire
of the place of arrival or the place
of sleep—a dark craft, vaulting
its possible crash, arches
its mathematic trajectory
over the house, its lights
lighted, a tentative constellation
marking one height of the sky.
But it measures
one depth of darkness also,
and circumscribes the paltry known;
its course is a severance
above which lights are meaningless.
And outward from that fight hunt
the made moons of our darkness
and desire, their circuits
ticking and aware, leaning
to the void; our listening strains
into the galaxial silence
beyond expectancy, unmeaning,
wishing to hear.
And in the selfsame dark
the creeks, in the aftermath
of the first heavy rains,
are audible to the hilltop
—the wash of sound entering
the consciousness of walls.
Among the soaked grasses
along the down-meaning streams
in the weather of engines
the old singing of the frogs
begins. The dark breeds
dawn, a deeper melting.