Classic Poem

I

It is summer, winter, any
time —
no time at all — but delight

the springing up
of those secret flowers
the others imitate and so

become round
extraordinary in petalage
yellow, blue

fluted and globed
slendercrimson
moonshaped —

in clusters on a wall.
Come!
And just now

you will not come, your
ankles
carry you another way, as

thought grown old — or
older — in
your eyes fires them against

me — small flowers
birds flitting here and there
between twigs

II

What have I done
to drive you away? It is
winter, true enough, but

this day I love you.
This day
there is no time at all

more than in under
my ribs where anatomists
say the heart is —

And just today you
will not have me. Well,
tomorrow it may be snowing —

I'll keep after you, your
repulse of me is no more
than a rebuff to the weather —

If we make a desert of
ourselves — we make
a desert . . .

III

Nothing is lost! the white
shellwhite
glassy, linenwhite, crystalwhite
crocuses with orange centers
the purple crocus with
an orange center, the yellow
crocus with a yellow center —

That which was large but
seemed spent of
power to fill the world with
its wave of splendor is
overflowing again into every
corner —

Though the eye
turns inward, the mind
has spread its embrace — in
a wind that
roughs the stiff petals —
More! the particular flower is
blossoming . . .

I

It is summer, winter, any
time —
no time at all — but delight

the springing up
of those secret flowers
the others imitate and so

become round
extraordinary in petalage
yellow, blue

fluted and globed
slendercrimson
moonshaped —

in clusters on a wall.
Come!
And just now

you will not come, your
ankles
carry you another way, as

thought grown old — or
older — in
your eyes fires them against

me — small flowers
birds flitting here and there
between twigs

II

What have I done
to drive you away? It is
winter, true enough, but

this day I love you.
This day
there is no time at all

more than in under
my ribs where anatomists
say the heart is —

And just today you
will not have me. Well,
tomorrow it may be snowing —

I'll keep after you, your
repulse of me is no more
than a rebuff to the weather —

If we make a desert of
ourselves — we make
a desert . . .

III

Nothing is lost! the white
shellwhite
glassy, linenwhite, crystalwhite
crocuses with orange centers
the purple crocus with
an orange center, the yellow
crocus with a yellow center —

That which was large but
seemed spent of
power to fill the world with
its wave of splendor is
overflowing again into every
corner —

Though the eye
turns inward, the mind
has spread its embrace — in
a wind that
roughs the stiff petals —
More! the particular flower is
blossoming . . .