A Glad Day for Laurence Vail
This year you gave me
The black flanks of a mule
To ripple and strain under me
And one day after another yellow as cantaloupe
Hung over my saddle like a melon-flower The day was dark when we set out over and time was spent on face of flower too bright for ordinary weather bred to applause of bolt or thunder its petals riveted flake by flake in blue but richer. Here people and stock and vegetation breathed air not rarer but laid the nostril wide like silver rings set one upon another in. Dark was the day the flock came close for comfort asking sirup to soothe devouring shears to travel through their fleece.
But it was a glad day came after
The sun was born with a cape of fire
Came jigging stamping clapping in
It was a glad day came after The speech that suits my ear and mouth is talk of cloth or keys or bread. A man's mind should be elsewhere. By climbing higher he pursues the sun where taste and scent and common shape have petrified have turned to glass. Quiet and pure her eye is shaped to gather landmarks herbs and flowers and mineral fists no light to set against the black advance. (But a long time I shall see the stony-footed chamois they brought in at night in a leather coat on a mule's back, like a man they had murdered, lifting him out by the chin and gazing into eyes as brown as deep as limpid death.)
But a glad day came after
The sun was born with a girdle of fire
Came stamping jigging clapping in
With his hands in his pockets and his pockets in his pants
It was a glad day came after There is another season that comes after spring, not summer but a month who combs her hair, and braids it fast with winds and lingers late, and will not heed the elements' complaint. There is a season strips the mountains bare of twig or blade and straps with violent paths the wilderness that quivers like a carp. And rocks are stern in language and in grace as words said of them or as dance upon. Nor move not heedlessly from place to place like facile-footed men but bide their time. There is another season after spring when lights as white as fountains spray the north, and leaves like tar drip thickly from the bough and cast a cloak of elegance around. When odor leaps full-blown upon the stalk and music runs in hard steep flights of sound, when taste lies slow as honey in the mouth and drifts of snow lie changeless at the pass.
It was a glad day came after Allos, when the mules come up out of the valley their old knees knuckle the skyline. There is no grip for the beasts' feet or food for their loose lips hanging other than thistles churned to fresh cream in their jaws, other than weather to flow whether to floe or mountain lake held fast. Allos, the times of year in the sireling of ewelings, in the bearing of a lamb in early darkness. Allos, under the armor which a breath might pierce, the water holds bouquets of trout and cresses. We went up to follow the spring's coming and the hard chatter of snows gone thin for water falling forever out of the mouth of sound.
It was a glad day came after
The sun was born with a hand of fire
You took me so high that the beasts faltered in sweat
We followed until twilight
The tongues of the sheep-bells calling
And your feet seeking root in the shale ahead.
The black flanks of a mule
To ripple and strain under me
And one day after another yellow as cantaloupe
Hung over my saddle like a melon-flower The day was dark when we set out over and time was spent on face of flower too bright for ordinary weather bred to applause of bolt or thunder its petals riveted flake by flake in blue but richer. Here people and stock and vegetation breathed air not rarer but laid the nostril wide like silver rings set one upon another in. Dark was the day the flock came close for comfort asking sirup to soothe devouring shears to travel through their fleece.
But it was a glad day came after
The sun was born with a cape of fire
Came jigging stamping clapping in
It was a glad day came after The speech that suits my ear and mouth is talk of cloth or keys or bread. A man's mind should be elsewhere. By climbing higher he pursues the sun where taste and scent and common shape have petrified have turned to glass. Quiet and pure her eye is shaped to gather landmarks herbs and flowers and mineral fists no light to set against the black advance. (But a long time I shall see the stony-footed chamois they brought in at night in a leather coat on a mule's back, like a man they had murdered, lifting him out by the chin and gazing into eyes as brown as deep as limpid death.)
But a glad day came after
The sun was born with a girdle of fire
Came stamping jigging clapping in
With his hands in his pockets and his pockets in his pants
It was a glad day came after There is another season that comes after spring, not summer but a month who combs her hair, and braids it fast with winds and lingers late, and will not heed the elements' complaint. There is a season strips the mountains bare of twig or blade and straps with violent paths the wilderness that quivers like a carp. And rocks are stern in language and in grace as words said of them or as dance upon. Nor move not heedlessly from place to place like facile-footed men but bide their time. There is another season after spring when lights as white as fountains spray the north, and leaves like tar drip thickly from the bough and cast a cloak of elegance around. When odor leaps full-blown upon the stalk and music runs in hard steep flights of sound, when taste lies slow as honey in the mouth and drifts of snow lie changeless at the pass.
It was a glad day came after Allos, when the mules come up out of the valley their old knees knuckle the skyline. There is no grip for the beasts' feet or food for their loose lips hanging other than thistles churned to fresh cream in their jaws, other than weather to flow whether to floe or mountain lake held fast. Allos, the times of year in the sireling of ewelings, in the bearing of a lamb in early darkness. Allos, under the armor which a breath might pierce, the water holds bouquets of trout and cresses. We went up to follow the spring's coming and the hard chatter of snows gone thin for water falling forever out of the mouth of sound.
It was a glad day came after
The sun was born with a hand of fire
You took me so high that the beasts faltered in sweat
We followed until twilight
The tongues of the sheep-bells calling
And your feet seeking root in the shale ahead.
Translation:
Language:
Reviews
No reviews yet.