Léonie Adams

A fall over rock, Metal answering to water, Is the seal of this spot; A land trodden by music And the tune forgot. Of a region savage, The territory that was broken, Silver gushed free; And earth holy, earth meek shall receive it In humility. This, not dwelt in, this haunted, The country of the proud, Is curdling to stone, And careless of the feet of the waters As they glance from it down.

These lovers’ inklings which our loves enmesh, Lost to the cunning and dimensional eye, Though tenemented in the selves we see, Not more perforce than azure to the sky, Were necromancy-juggled to the flesh, And startled from no daylight you or me. For trance and silvemess those moons commend, Which blanch the warm life silver-pale; or look What ghostly portent mist distorts from slight Clay shapes; the willows that the waters took Liquid and brightened in the waters bend, And we, in love’s reflex, seemed loved of right. Then no more think to net forthwith love’s thing, But cast for it by spirit sleight-of-hand; Then only in the slant glass contemplate, Where lineament outstripping line is scanned, Then on the perplexed text leave pondering, Love’s proverb is set down transliterate.

Then I was sealed, and like the wintering tree I stood me locked upon a summer core; Living, had died a death, and asked no more. And I lived then, but as enduringly, And my heart beat, but only as to be. Ill weathers well, hail, gust and cold I bore, I held my life as hid, at root, in store: Thus I lived then, till this air breathed on me. Till this kind air breathed kindness everywhere, There where my times had left me I would stay. Then I was staunch, I knew nor yes nor no; But now the wishful leaves have thronged the air. My every leaf leans forth upon the day; Alas, kind element! which comes to go.