There is a beauty for some
In this country cut into tiny squares,
Like peppermint candy, by garden walls;
With grape-vines growing against the walls,
And stunted fruit-trees-pear and plum,
Each fruit picked off before it falls.
There is a beauty I have seen.
Today I view it with a question,
Tired of a too, too brilliant green,
Too brilliant whites against the green.
Perhaps, from eating their plums, I have
A slight attack of indigestion.
At least my stomach is turned against
This landscape of carefully rounded plum-trees.
I long for a landscape where briars sprout
Under the twisted, fantastical gum-trees;
For a perverse, untutored country,
With all the gardens inside out.
In my own country the great pines grow
At the edge of the woods, in the heart of the woods,
Wherever it pleased the wind to plant them;
Not in formation, row by row,
In space the needs of men could grant them.
And in my country chestnut-trees
Blossom and bear wherever they please.
About my country is nothing grand:
Three marching hills in minuscule;
Two valleys that I could hold in my hand;
Eight farms; a crossroads store; a school
Which, like the hills, is dusty green;
A church where I was never seen;
A trout stream–so I catalogue
The beauties of my country:
Item: A grove of hickory;
Item: A hollow maple log;
Item: An island in a bog;
Item: Damn my memory–
You can imagine the rest!
But sometimes when the candles sputter,
The trees outside, lost in the utter
Black darkness of the night, croon songs
Like those of my own country.
And sometimes when in bed I see
Three hills against the canopy,
Three mischievous little hills that lie
Side by side, in a narrow bed,
Kicking their feet up at a muslin sky.
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