A SONG of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms--a song of the soil of fields.
A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers
handle the pitch-fork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
......
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child
leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as
if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
......
660
'Tis good—the looking back on Grief—
To re-endure a Day—
We thought the Mighty Funeral—
Of All Conceived Joy—
To recollect how Busy Grass
Did meddle—one by one—
Till all the Grief with Summer—waved
......
So you're back from up the country, Mister Lawson, where you went,
And you're cursing all the business in a bitter discontent;
Well, we grieve to disappoint you, and it makes us sad to hear
That it wasn't cool and shady -- and there wasn't whips of beer,
And the looney bullock snorted when you first came into view --
Well, you know it's not so often that he sees a swell like you;
And the roads were hot and dusty, and the plains were burnt and brown,
And no doubt you're better suited drinking lemon-squash in town.
Yet, perchance, if you should journey down the very track you went
In a month or two at furthest, you would wonder what it meant;
......
How he sleepeth! having drunken
Weary childhood's mandragore,
From his pretty eyes have sunken
Pleasures, to make room for more- -
Sleeping near the withered nosegay, which he pulled the day before.
Nosegays! leave them for the waking:
Throw them earthward where they grew.
Dim are such, beside the breaking
Amaranths he looks unto- -
......
In the summertime, the warmth of the sun baked
The desterted suburb street
Too hot to play, we stayed in the basement
Playing floor hockey or watching TV
Until someone illegally released
the fire hydrant
And we played in the water, trying not
To get caught by the fire department
Until dinnertime
As the sun still brightly watching
......
Flowery paths wildly intersect rich, late summer;
While beautiful flute music plays in green trees,
Amidst song so rife, without drumrolls of thunder.
In butterscotch ease, drift humming, honeybees.
While beautiful flute music plays in green trees;
The exotic blooms send pleasant fumes, far away.
In butterscotch ease, drift humming, honeybees;
With huge, tossed hibiscuses, in crimson disarray.
......
peach is on the rose
since orange sun shines so bright
earth's bathed in warm light
redbirds are singing
of yellow saffron summer
near garden stunners
sapphires in the sky
vagrant clouds have gone missing
......
I recount the nights of faint, distant glows —
the dimmed party lights of summer —
of silenced streaks of fleeing light, tassels of clouds
adorned in fleeting whites,
on the broad balcony of the west, when the
incidents on the large vestibule of the sun sum up
their lives and times on seasons’ palimpsests.
The wild party closes by the stretch of the twenty-first hour.
Darkness, frightened, creeps in with the stealth of a departing thief,
the coyness and diffidence of an undocumented harlot.
......
Beneath the rays of the unmerciful sun
July sang its old drowsy tune,
Even the birds made no move to shun,
As they stood mesmerized by the croon.
In that hush of a golden disc,
I surrendered to stillness of grove;
Only thoughts were not silent and brisk,
Aching bitterly, longing to prove
......