Archibald MacLeish

“ What will they do—
We are having a late spring, we are having
The snow in April, the grass heaving
Under the wet snow, the grass
Burdened and nothing blossoms, grows
In the fields nothing and the garden fallow,
And now the wild birds follow
The wild birds and the thrush is tame.
Well, there is time still, there is time.
To-morrow there will be to-morrow
And summer swelling through the marrow
Of the cold trees.
Wait! Let us wait!
Let us wait until to-morrow. The wet
Snow wrinkles, it will rot,
It will moulder at the root
Of the oak-tree. Wait! ”

“ Her breath came so much faster than the sea—
And walking home from school, that Syrian woman,
That—"Mrs. what did they call her"—the Syrian
Up at the corner, she gave her a blood-root flower
With white petals and the scarlet ooze
Where the stem was broken. She said, In my country
The feet of spring are stained with the red blood,
The women go into the hills with flowers
Dark like blood, they have a song of one
Dead and the spring blossoming from his blood—
And he comes again, they say, when the spring comes. ”

“ The blood-root stem—and on the Baalbec road
Young men with garlands of anemones
And naked girls in girdles of wild rose
Splashed the thick dust from their thudding feet
And the sunlight jingled into grains of gold
And away off, away off, far away
The singing on the mountain—
Shall we go
Up through the Gorge or round by Ryan’s place? ”

“ The faint sweet smell of the trees sickened her.
She walked at the sea’s edge on the blank sand.
Certainly the salt stone that the sea divulges
At the first quarter does not fructify
In pod or tuber nor will the fruiterer cull
Delicate plums from its no-branches—Oh,
Listen to me for the word of the matter is in me—
And if it heats in the sun it heats to itself
Alone and to none that come after it and the rain
Impregnates it not to the slightest—Oh, listen ”