Dandelion, isn't it time?
Dark was the British winter, and dank,
and what passed for spring
just more of the same. When will you
show your face around here again?

Mayfly, who live for just a day,
when will you take the time
to drag your larger, longer shadow
down from the sundial?
May we be granted the sight,

if not of sun, then of a yellow
so luminous we gray souls look
and then look away:
let acres of oilseed rape bloom,
acidic as your grace.

Swift and swallow working your way
toward heaven on the wind,
let it rattle the scarecrows' rags.
But not enough to scare the rooks
picking at the field left fallow,

not bothering to beg your indulgence.
May the wild plum keep its flowers
just two more days, that it set fruit,
though, come summer's end,
the yield prove largely stone, and sour.

Consider the blackbird, beak full of straw:
who has no nest builds one now.
Who has a house wanders out of it, forgetting
where she was going in a sudden snow
of cherry petals, so fine their fury.

Note: Loved that resonance to Rilke's "Autumn" in the last stanza - "who has a house wanders out of it" - as I had done earlier this morning, ending up walking back home, in pouring summer rain.


Big Book Of Poetry

Dawn’s faint breath
breathes with your mouth
at the ends of empty streets.
Gray light your eyes,
sweet drops of dawn
on dark hills.
Your steps and breath
like the wind of dawn
smother houses.
The city shudders,
Stones exhale—
you are life, an awakening.

Star lost
in the light of dawn,
trill of the breeze,
warmth, breath—
the night is done.

You are light and morning.

*original title by Pavese in English, written for his lover, the American actress Constance Dowling


Notes: As I looked out into the foggy vistas, here - somewhere in the Austrian Alps - my mind went back to this poem


Big Book Of Poetry

Of course it was a disaster.
The unbearable, dearest secret
has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life.


Big Book Of Poetry