EVEN iron can put forth,
Even
iron.
This is the iron age,
But let us take
heart
Seeing iron
break and bud,
Seeing rusty iron puff with clouds of
blossom.
The almond-tree,
December’s bare iron hooks
sticking out of earth.
The almond-tree,
That knows the deadliest
poison, like a snake
In supreme bitterness.
Upon the iron, and upon the
steel,
Odd flakes as
if of snow, odd bits of snow,
Odd crumbs of melting
snow.
But you mistake, it is not from the
sky;
From out the
iron, and from out the steel,
Flying not down from heaven, but storming
up,
Strange storming
up from the dense under-earth
Along the iron, to the living steel
In rose-hot tips, and flakes of
rose-pale snow
Setting supreme annunciation to the world.
Nay, what a heart of delicate
super-faith,
Iron-breaking,
The
rusty swords of almond-trees.
Trees suffer, like races, down the
long ages.
They
wander and are exiled, they live in exile through long
ages
Like drawn
blades never sheathed, hacked and gone black,
The alien trees in alien lands:
and yet
The heart of
blossom,
The
unquenchable heart of blossom!
Look at the many-cicatrised frail
vine, none more scarred
and
frail.
Yet see him
fling himself abroad in fresh abandon
From the small
wound-stump.
Even the wilful, obstinate, gummy
fig-tree
Can be kept
down, but he’ll burst like a polyp into
prolixity.
And the almond-tree, in exile, in the iron age!
This is the ancient southern earth
whence the vases were
baked, amphoras,
craters, cantharus, oenochoe, and open —
hearted cylix.
Bristling now with the iron of
almond-trees
Iron, but unforgotten,
Iron, dawn-hearted,
Ever-beating dawn-heart,
enveloped in iron against the exile,
against the
ages.
See it come forth in
blossom
From the
snow-remembering heart
In long-nighted January,
In the long dark nights of the
evening star, and Sirius, and
the Etna
snow-wind through the long night.
Sweating his drops of blood through
the long-nighted
Gethsemane
Into blossom, into pride, into
honey-triumph, into most
exquisite
splendour.
Oh, give
me the tree of life in blossom
And the Cross sprouting its superb and fearless
flowers!
Something must be reassuring to the
almond, in the
evening star, and the snow-wind,
and the long, long,
nights,
Some memory of far, sun-gentler
lands,
So that the
faith in his heart smiles again
And his blood ripples with that untellable
delight of once —
more-vindicated faith,
And the Gethsemane blood at the
iron pores unfolds,
unfolds,
Pearls itself into tenderness
of bud
And in a
great and sacred forthcoming steps forth, steps out
in one stride
A
naked tree of blossom, like a bridegroom bathing in
dew,
divested of cover,
Frail-naked, utterly
uncovered
To the
green night-baying of the dog-star, Etna’s snow-edged
wind
And January’s
loud-seeming sun.
Think of it, from the iron
fastness
Suddenly to
dare to come out naked, in perfection of blossom,
beyond the sword-rust.
Think, to stand there in full-unfolded nudity,
smiling,
With all
the snow-wind, and the sun-glare, and the dog-star
baying epithalamion.
Oh, honey-bodied beautiful
one,
Come forth from
iron,
Red your heart
is.
Fragile-tender,
fragile-tender life-body,
More fearless than iron all the
time,
And so much
prouder, so disdainful of reluctances.
In the distance like hoar-frost,
like silvery ghosts communing
on a green
hill,
Hoar-frost-like and mysterious.
In the garden raying out
With a body like spray,
dawn-tender, and looking
about
With such
insuperable, subtly-smiling assurance,
Sword-blade-born.
Unpromised,
No bounds being
set.
Flaked out and
come unpromised,
The
tree being life-divine,
Fearing nothing, life-blissful at the
core
Within iron and
earth.
Knots of pink,
fish-silvery
In
heaven, in blue, blue heaven,
Soundless, bliss-full, wide-rayed,
honey-bodied,
Red at
the core,
Red at the
core,
Knotted in
heaven upon the fine light.
Open,
Open,
Five times wide open,
Six times wide
open,
And given, and
perfect;
And red at
the core with the last sore-heartedness,
Sore-hearted-looking.
Fontana Vecchia.