The roseate Judas trees
Suffused the delicate air
With blushes, pale and fresh,
As if a sunrise purled
Over the low horizon
And over the fields of mist
To that resurging garden.
Even then, when morning filled
The long green shade with dew,
She walked with her lover’s ghost.
Under the leaf and bloom
Of a blended southern spring,
Under the roseate hue,
Dawn cast a green shade,
The shade where toiling roots
Twined downward restlessly,
The shade where the eye waits,
The dove’s eye, deep, unseen.
Then, in her youngest love,
In her careless warmth and joy,
Where trees were soft and gay,
She walked with her lover’s ghost.
And I, a trembling boy,
Was brave to be so loved.
She walked where the Judas trees
Branched in the morning light
Like filigrees of dawn,
Where old azaleas bloomed
From cherished roots. The South
Was all a garden then,
Magnolias, distant pines,
And iris near the road.
The South was an old world,
Deep in the ways of care
And fragile beauty, soft
In the wasting, crumbling days.
And the seasons told of love
And of old time, speaking
The endless dolor of alas.
Only the southern spring
Could touch her loveliness
With death’s idea. Loss
Is the learning of the South
That teaches early love
The shape of the round eye-bone,
And how the cold hand lies.
The colors glowed and glowed
Over the long green shade.
Sunlight can hide a fawn
As then dawn folded her.
She walked by the Judas trees,
Where I was a lover’s ghost,
And the blossoms bent to her.
And she with her fragile hand
Touched then the sister trees,
Bending and moving slowly
And gracefully, as April
Moves on the southern garden;
And laughter flowered there,
Languidly, quietly,
And the deep flower of her eye
That read in spring the joy
Of lingering and delay.
Her love was the pause of knowing,
And if her eyes were turned
Away to another scene,
Winter and a black garden,
No anguish or despair,
Reproachful sigh or tear,
Came upon us.
She said:
“See how the blossoms cling
Like small jewels to the bough.
And yet they tire and fall.
You have a bitter heart,
Hard in you as a stone,
But someone will bargain for me
After your change and mine.
I will return.” And then
Her fool said, “Fear not.”
But now in the frosty light
The blue shadow of her eye,
The dark image of her hand,
Are all the color of spring
And the only returning.
Once in the southern garden
She walked where the soft dove’s eye
Hid in the long green shade,
And she was safe in love
That savored the scheme of death.
And I was a northern fool.
But how can I urge my heart
From love so truly mine
That came like a somber wish
In the deepest days of youth,
The love in a southern garden
Where I walked like a ghost
And lost myself in loving?
And where shall I turn again
To find such beauty, lost
In the mortal days and deep
In sorrow’s selflessness?
The Judas trees are faded,
The South is a loud arcade,
The sweet expense of flesh
In love against time’s thrift
Has changed to a mental pang
And listless expectation.
Over the land, the stars
Click, bright and cold.
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