Saying, as the wind would,
"Please stand still…"
Sketching you and vanishing
Over some hill!
Quiet Has Come Down (Owen Sound)
Quiet has come down over this little village
As if a Nun, saying her beads
Had asked for peace
And it been granted.
A white sort of quiet,
Having to do with the snow
And the little necklace of lights on the Main Street,
And the white prows of the fleet in the harbour,
Silent, and folded in, like giant gulls.
Almost the whiteness of this quiet
Is too beautiful to be borne.
Were it not for the ebony of the branches,
And the dark arm of a church spire
And your black hair like a dark bird flying!
Hands
Hands have a way
Of betraying things.
I found this out
In a small, strange way;
You touched my face
The other day!
Rain … In the City
Rain…
Even in the city
It has the smell of the country.
Wet grasses … thorny hedges,
And chestnuts shaking down their polished brownness.
And ghosts of apple trees.
I swear they haunt the city streets
And fling their sweetness over formal lawns
And stiff, uncompromising dahlia beds!
Just let the drops come stinging down
Against your eyelids;
False tears that tangle in your lashes,
Making blurs of all the lamp-post lights
Until they swim like harbour lamps
Up through the larkspur evening.