And how the year had left us big red fruit
Dropping in the orchard of the heart.
The scent of shoots and bramble smoking brought
Ways a summer died where I was born:
Pumpkin gourds that emptied out my thought,
And grinning at me, cobs of indian com;
The pheasant tails that streaked across the wind
Come streaking through the wheatfields of the mind.
o
sweet woods that watched the wild deer; young,
The spirited were they who cocked a gun.
o
milkweed blowing from the milkweed pod.
Remember those who opened out the heart
And flung the fibers of their hearts to God,
When all around them, worry, weathers, war;
The breath of Winter whispering Retreat,
They sang, they sang, they sang just where we weep:
Cervantes, ragged, eating his wild wit;
Mozart playing in a room unlit.
And walking down the late September street,
When cloud might bring not cherubim, but blight,
Remember with what arms they decked defeat,
For only such can set the heartbeat right,
Whose life was like that moment when a field
Or any sight that loved us once, revealed
How long the moment, and how short the year,
As
when, in towns, I see the wild red deer.
AFTER READING RENAN'S LIFE OF CHRIST
Someone had to write it out that way,
With the logic of a calculating thief
Who turns the diamond over till his eye
Be blear and, bit by bit, his bold heart shrink.
