I can discern at last how grew
This tree, so naked and so true.
‘Spring was my death; when all is sung,
It was the Autumn made me young.’
Midwinter: packed with ice the butt,
Splitting its sides.
Roots hard as iron; the back door shut.
Heaped wood a ringing axe divides.
Sacks on the pipes. No river flows,
No tap, no spring. A skater goes
Skimming across the pond. A stone
Stays on the ice where it is thrown.
Under a bone a blue-tit swings,
The keen light glancing on his wings.
To robins crusts and crumbs are tossed,
Yellow against the white of frost.
A quilted world. Glazed mistletoe.
Spades glint, and sledges glide, on snow.
Boys scoop it up with tingling hands,
Steadying the snowman where he stands,
Numb into dusk. Then holly boughs
Darken the walls in many a house,
While moth flakes pile on wood and ground,
Muffling the panes, and hide all sound.
The tree of Winter, Winter’s tree:
Winter a dark, a naked tree.
What you have seen you have not known.
Look for it now that Winter’s gone.
The Winter stars, the silent king,
The angelic night, give way to Spring.
March into May: the lengthening day
With forward light
Kindles the finches in their play,
Turning their wings in amorous flight.
No star in frost more brightly shines
Than, in white grass, these celandines.
Now sunlight warms and light wind shakes
The unopened blooms. The jonquil breaks
Clean from its sheath. Gold wax and gums
Hold the buds fast. The chestnut comes
First into leaf, its trance-bound hands
Pulled from the shell by silken strands,
Breathless and white. The sap unseen
Climbs the stiff stalk and makes all green.
All timeless coils break through, sublime,
The skins and cerements of time.
What spikenard makes the dark earth sweet?
Life from the hyacinth’s winding-sheet
Breathes on the fields, and thrushes sing:
‘Earth is our mother. Spring is Spring.’
The tree of Spring, the selfsame tree:
Spring is the green, foretelling tree.
What you have seen you cannot know.
Winter is gone, and Spring will go.
These blossoms falling through long grass
Will fade from swallows’ quivering glass.
Now the meridian. Summer glows,
A furnace weighed,
Deep in red rose and burnet rose,
Entranced by its own musk and shade.
Birds sing more softly. Foxgloves keep
Over the hedge a misty sleep.
Gardens are secret in their walls
And mountains feel their waterfalls.
Murmuring among thick blooms, the bees
Plunge, and in silence honey seize,
Then bear it droning to their hive
Of light by labour kept alive.
Yet still the toil, where leaves are dense,
Breathes of the Spring’s first frankincense.
Butterflies dance in blazing beams.
Great trees are hushed, and still the streams.
On river banks, where boughs serene
Reflect their every shade of green,
Bathers take rest, and bodies come
Naked to peace, and their first home.
The tree of Summer, Summer’s tree,
Lost in the sleep of Adam’s tree.
Might this indeed have been the prime,
That Eden state of lasting time?
Men reap the grain and tend the vine,
Heaping their tributes, bread and wine.
At last late leaves bright-coloured bring,
Turning time’s keys,
Those fruits foreshadowed by the Spring.
Acorns and nuts restore their trees.
As certain jewels have the power
To magnetize and guide the hour,
So seeds before our eyes are strewn
Fast hidden in the pod’s cocoon.
These die, yet in themselves they keep
All seasons cradled in their sleep.
Guarding the lost through calms and storms,
These are the year’s eternal forms,
An alphabet whose letters all
Mark out a sacred festival.
The birth of vision from these urns
Into whose silence dust returns
Fills the dense wood. Saint Hubert’s rein
Stops the swift horse; for there again
A stag between its antlers holds
Heaven’s unique glory, and the world’s.
Tree of beginning, Autumn tree:
Divine imagination’s tree.
Leave a Reply