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 stackyard,
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 buttercups was I.
What then is there hidden in the
skirts of all the blossom,
What is peeping from your wings, oh mother
hen?
‘T is 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?