Clover

These are fragrant acres where
Evening comes long hours late
And the still unmoving air
Cools the fevered hands of Fate.

Meadows where the afternoon
Hangs suspended in a flower
And the moments of our doom
Drift upon a weightless hour.

And we who thought that surely night
Would bring us triumph or defeat
Only find the stars are white
Clover at our naked feet.  

Tennessee Williams

Merry Summer Solstice!

Summer Solstice

I wanted to see where beauty comes from

without you in the world, hauling my heart

across sixty acres of northeast meadow,

my pockets filling with flowers.

Then I remembered,

it’s you I miss in the brightness

and body of every living name:

rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch.

You are the green wonder of June,

root and quasar, the thirst for salt.

When I finally understand that people fail

at love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle,

the paper wings of the dragonfly

aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?

If I get the story right, desire is continuous,

equatorial. There is still so much

I want to know: what you believe

can never be removed from us,

what you dreamed on Walnut Street

in the unanswerable dark of your childhood,

learning pleasure on your own.

Tell me our story: are we impetuous,

are we kind to each other, do we surrender

to what the mind cannot think past?

Where is the evidence I will learn

to be good at loving?

The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond

for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.

There are violet hills,

there is the covenant of duskbirds.

The moon comes over the mountain

like a big peach, and I want to tell you

what I couldn’t say the night we rushed

North, how I love the seriousness of your fingers

and the way you go into yourself,

calling my half-name like a secret.

I stand between taproot and treespire.

Here is the compass rose

to help me live through this.

Here are twelve ways of knowing

what blooms even in the blindness

of such longing. Yellow oxeye,

viper’s bugloss with its set of pink arms

pleading do not forget me.

We hunger for eloquence.

We measure the isopleths.

I am visiting my life with reckless plenitude.

The air is fragrant with tiny strawberries.

Fireflies turn on their electric wills:

an effulgence. Let me come back

whole, let me remember how to touch you

before it is too late.  

Stacie Cassarino

In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden

Last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart

Six hard red apples broke through the greenhouse glass and

Landed in the middle of those ever-so-slightly green leaves

That seem no mix of seeds and soil but of pastels and light and

Chalk x’s mark our oaks that are supposed to be cut down   

I’ve seen the neighbors frown when they look over the fence

And see our espalier pear trees bowing out of shape I did like that

They looked like candelabras against the wall but what’s the sense

In swooning over pruning I said as much to Mrs. Jones and I swear

She threw her cane at me and walked off down the street without

It has always puzzled me that people coo over bonsai trees when

You can squint your eyes and shrink anything without much of   

A struggle ensued with some starlings and the strawberry nets

So after untangling the two I took the nets off and watched birds

With red beaks fly by all morning at the window I reread your letter

About how the castles you flew over made crenellated shadows on   

The water in the rainbarrel has overflowed and made a small swamp

I think the potatoes might turn out slightly damp don’t worry

If there is no fog on the day you come home I will build a bonfire

So the smoke will make the cedars look the way you like them

To close I’m sorry there won’t be any salad and I love you

Matthea Harvey

The Promise

Stay, I said

to the cut flowers.

They bowed

their heads lower.

Stay, I said to the spider,

who fled.

Stay, leaf.

It reddened,

embarrassed for me and itself.

Stay, I said to my body.

It sat as a dog does,

obedient for a moment,

soon starting to tremble.

Stay, to the earth

of riverine valley meadows,

of fossiled escarpments,

of limestone and sandstone.

It looked back

with a changing expression, in silence.

Stay, I said to my loves.

Each answered,

Always.

Jane Hirshfield

Silences

for Elizabeth

1
Poetry is a weapon, and should be used,
though not in the crudity of violence.
It is a prayer before an unknown altar,
a spell to bless the silence.

2
There is a music beyond all this,
beyond all forms of grievance,
where anger lays its muzzle down
into the lap of silence.

3
Or some butterfly script,
fathomed only by the other,
as supple fingers draw
a silent message from the tangible.

John Montague

Night Blooming Jasmine/Il Gelsomino Notturno

And in the hour when blooms unfurl,
thoughts of my loved ones come to me.
              The moths of evening swirl
              around the snowball tree.

Nothing by now shouts or sings;
one house only whispers then hushes.
              Nestlings sleep beneath wings,
              like eyes beneath their lashes.

From open calyces there flows
a ripe strawberry scent, in waves.
              A lamp in the house glows.
              Grasses are born on graves.

A late bee sighs, back from its tours
and no cell vacant anymore.
              The Hen and her cheeping stars
              cross their threshing floor.

All through the night the flowers flare,
exhaling scent into the wind.
              The lamp now climbs the stair,
              shines from above, is dimmed…

It’s dawn: the petals, slightly worn,
close up again—each bud to brood,
              in its soft, secret urn,
              on some yet-nameless good.

Giovanni Pascoli

Translated by Geoffrey Brock

Il Gelsomino Notturno

 

E s'aprono i fiori notturni,
nell'ora che penso a' miei cari.
              Sono apparse in mezzo ai viburni
              le farfalle crepuscolari.

Da un pezzo si tacquero i gridi:
là sola una casa bisbiglia.
              Sotto l'ali dormono i nidi,
              come gli occhi sotto le ciglia.

Dai calici aperti si esala
l'odore di fragole rosse.
              Splende un lume là nella sala.
              Nasce l’erba sopra le fosse.

Un'ape tardiva sussurra
trovando già prese le celle.
              La Chioccetta per l'aia azzurra
              va col suo pigolio di stelle.

Per tutta la notte s'esala
l'odore che passa col vento.
              Passa il lume su per la scala;
              brilla al primo piano: s'è spento…

È l'alba: si chiudono i petali
un poco gualciti; si cova,
              dentro l'urna molle e segreta,
              non so che felicità nuova.

 

Pear Tree

Silver dust  

lifted from the earth,  

higher than my arms reach,  

you have mounted.  

O silver,

higher than my arms reach  

you front us with great mass;  

  

no flower ever opened  

so staunch a white leaf,  

no flower ever parted silver

from such rare silver;  

  

O white pear,  

your flower-tufts,  

thick on the branch,  

bring summer and ripe fruits

in their purple hearts.

H.D.