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2 2 Before I woke there entered in A woman with a golden skin That tangled with the light. A tang of orchards climbed the stair And dwindled in the waxen air, Crisping the midnight, And the white pillows of my bed On apple-tasted darkness fed. Weakened with appetite Sleep broke like a dish wherein A woman lay with golden skin. Midsummer Hereabouts the signs are good. Propitious creatures of the wood After their fashion Have pitied and blessed before our eyes. All unpremeditated lies Our scattered passion. Flowers whose name I do not know Make happy signals to us. O Did ever bees Stumble on such a quiet before! The evening is a huge closed door And no one sees How we, absorbed in our own art, Have locked ourselves inside one heart, Grown silent and, Under beech and sacred larch, Watched as though it were an arch That heart expand. selected poems
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Something that for this long year Had hid and halted like a deer Turned marvellous, Parted the tragic grasses, tame, Lifted its perfect head and came To welcome us. We have, dear reason, of this glade An endless tabernacle made, An origin. Well for whatever lonely one Will find this right place to lay down His desert in. Soft, to your Places Soft, to your places, animals. Your legendary duty calls. It is, to be Lucky for my love and me And yet we have seen that all’s A fiction that is heard of love’s difficulty. And what if the simple primrose show That mighty work went on below Before it grew A moral miracle for us two? Since of ourselves we know Beauty to be an easy thing, this will do. But O when beauty’s brought to pass Will Time set down his hour-glass And rest content, His hand upon that monument? Unless it is so, alas That the heart’s calling is but to go naked and diffident. Soft, to your places, love; I kiss Because it is, because it is. from poems (1956) 3

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Before I woke there entered in A woman with a golden skin

That tangled with the light. A tang of orchards climbed the stair And dwindled in the waxen air,

Crisping the midnight, And the white pillows of my bed On apple-tasted darkness fed.

Weakened with appetite Sleep broke like a dish wherein A woman lay with golden skin.

Midsummer

Hereabouts the signs are good. Propitious creatures of the wood

After their fashion Have pitied and blessed before our eyes. All unpremeditated lies

Our scattered passion.

Flowers whose name I do not know Make happy signals to us. O

Did ever bees Stumble on such a quiet before! The evening is a huge closed door

And no one sees

How we, absorbed in our own art, Have locked ourselves inside one heart,

Grown silent and, Under beech and sacred larch, Watched as though it were an arch

That heart expand.

selected poems

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