In the morning that comes up behind the roof, in the shelter of the bridge, in the corner of the cypresses that rise above the wall, a rooster has crowed. In the bell tower that rips the air with its shining point, the notes ring out and already the morning din can be heard in the street; the only street that goes from the river to the mountain dividing the woods. One looks for some other words but the ideas are always just as dark, just as simple and singularly painful. There is hardly more than the eyes, the open air, the grass and the water in the distance with, around every bend, a well or a cool basin. In the right-hand corner the last house with a larger head at the window. The trees are extremely alive and all those familiar companions walk along the demolished wall that is crushed into the thorns with bursts of laughter. Above the ravine the din augments, swells, and if the car passes on the upper road one no longer knows if it is the flowers or the little bells that are chiming. Under the blazing sun, when the landscape is on fire, the traveler crosses the stream on a very narrow bridge, before a dark hole where the trees line the water that falls asleep in the afternoon. And, against the trembling background of the woods, the motionless man.
It’s good you came—she says. You heard a plane crashed on Thursday? Well so they came to see me about it. The story is he was on the passenger list. So what, he might have changed his mind. They gave me some pills so I wouldn’t fall apart. Then they showed me I don’t know who. All black, burned except one hand. A scrap of shirt, a watch, a wedding ring. I got furious, that can’t be him. He wouldn’t do that to me, look like that. The stores are bursting with those shirts. The watch is just a regular old watch. And our names on that ring,
Mother, the root of this little yellow flower Among the stones has the taste of quinine. Things are strange to-day on the cliff. The sun shines so bright, And the grasshopper works at his sewing-machine So hard. Here’s one on my hand, mother, look; I lie so still. There’s one on your book.
But I have something to tell more strange. So leave Your book to the grasshopper, mother dear,— Like a green knight in a dazzling market-place,— And listen now. Can you hear what I hear Far out? Now and then the foam there curls And stretches a white arm out like a girl’s.
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread
C. Damon, come drive thy flocks this way. D. No, ’tis too late; they went astray. C. I have a grassy scutcheon spied, Where Flora blazons all her pride. The grass I aim to feast thy sheep: The flowers I for thy temples keep. D. Grass withers; and the flowers too fade. C. Seize the short joys then, ere they vade,
Oh chimes set high on the sunny tower Ring on, ring on unendingly, Make all the hours a single hour, For when the dusk begins to flower, The man I love will come to me! ...
But no, go slowly as you will, I should not bid you hasten so,
Ye learned sisters which have oftentimes Beene to me ayding, others to adorne: Whom ye thought worthy of your gracefull rymes, That even the greatest did not greatly scorne To heare theyr names sung in your simple layes, But joyed in theyr prayse. And when ye list your owne mishaps to mourne, Which death, or love, or fortunes wreck did rayse, Your string could soone to sadder tenor turne, And teach the woods and waters to lament Your dolefull dreriment. Now lay those sorrowfull complaints aside, And having all your heads with girland crownd, Helpe me mine owne loves prayses to resound, Ne let the same of any be envide:
On a road through the mountains with a friend many years ago I came to a curve on a slope where a clear stream flowed down flashing across dark rocks through its own echoes that could neither be caught nor forgotten it was the turning of autumn and already the mornings were cold with ragged clouds in the hollows long after sunrise but the pasture sagging like a roof the glassy water and flickering yellow leaves
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