OH the green glimmer of apples in
the orchard,
Lamps
in a wash of rain!
Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stack-yard,
Oh tears on the window
pane!
Nothing now will ripen the bright
green apples,
Full
of disappointment and of rain,
Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the
yellow
dapples
Of autumn tell the withered tale
again.
All round the yard it is cluck, my
brown hen,
Cluck,
and the rain-wet wings,
Cluck, my marigold bird, and again
Cluck for your yellow
darlings.
For the grey rat found the gold
thirteen
Huddled
away in the dark,
Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and
keen,
Extinct one yellow-fluffy
spark.
Once I had a lover bright like
running water,
Once
his face was laughing like the sky;
Open like the sky looking down in all its
laughter
On the
buttercups, and the buttercups was I.
What, then, is there hidden in the
skirts of all the
blossom?
What is peeping from your wings, oh
mother
hen?
‘Tis the sun who asks the question, in a lovely
haste
for wisdom;
What a lovely haste for wisdom is in
men!
Yea, but it is cruel when undressed
is all the blossom,
And her shift is lying white upon the floor,
That a grey one, like a shadow,
like a rat, a thief, a
rain-storm,
Creeps upon her then and
gathers in his store.
Oh the grey garner that is full of
half-grown apples,
Oh the golden sparkles laid extinct!
And oh, behind the cloud-sheaves, like yellow
autumn
dapples,
Did you see the wicked sun that
winked!