And Wept No Shadow Flowers

And wept no shadow flowers, when all burst autumn
the flux of nature changes, flux to burst the waters
becoming, then, light in this garden, colours
rich with the hills’ laughter; those hills, that laughter
that world, recalled like a baby lying still beneath the trees
without summer, into algid work falls one’s soul

When numbs the autumn wind, I panic, dear
and see the changing light of pastures and houses
solitude meets me yet again, moments change
I change, I without nerve, who once might have leapt
forward, ever ready for that collision of moments, my love,
that fits not so easily now, inert in its landlocked slumber

But you, entranced, who cannot ever be patient
sometimes longing to meet as in our first garden
flowers, sunbeams, trees, nourished by light and peace
housed in exaltation, that fierce instrument of exaltation
seized us, becoming now an inner, unchanging place
where time, its patient receptacle, learns to wait

Who am I, I panic! Will I wake God with this
quiet of years that still deafens like a wall?
Will I learn by His seventh word? For you, by you,
good fruit was raised in our own garden, quiet and strong
and while gathering fruit rooted in that golden summer air
its breath told of hours, of days, and of far richer poetry

Trees die, like Lovers and myself, the Inhabited
talking often of tears, waking to detachment, giving
over our nourished world to hushed laughter; our world, spent
We groan and meet the changes, with neither face nor trust
never any peace, just seasons, grasses and farewells
they are wakes of ghosts, exposed by fertile reason