Poetry
RODIN
I
Windless plane-trees above Rodini
To the pencil or the eye are tempters
Where of late trees have become ears in leaf,
Curved for the cicada's first monotony
Hollow the comb, mellow the sweetness,
Amber the honey-spoil
In these windless unechoing valleys
The mind slips like a chisel-hand
Touching the surfaces of the clement blue
Yet must not damage the solitary Turk
Gathering his team and singing, in whose brain
The same disorder and the loneliness-
The what-we-have-in-common of us all
Is there enough perhaps to found a world?
Then, of what you said once, the passing
Of something on the road beyond the tombstones
Reflecting on dark hair with its sudden theft
Of blue from the darkness of violets
And below the nape of the neck a mole
All mixed in this odorless water-clock of hours.
