Dead Days

The haws cling to the thorn,
Shrivelled and red;
The limbs long dead
Clutch at a leaf long torn—­
It taps all day on the spikes
As the spume licks over the dikes.

  The reeds creak in the dawn
  By the dead pond;
  Dry tongues respond
  From grasses yellow and drawn;
  And ever scourged by the wind,
  The alders clatter and grind.

  Vines furred with the frost
  String from the wall: 
  Their bones recall
  Summer leaves long lost,
  Cricket and fly and bee
  And their low melody.

  No bird wails to the waste
  Of scentless snow,
  Where streaming low
  The steel-blue shadows haste;
  But through the hard night
  The dead moon takes flight

The Winter Harvest

Between the blackened curbs lie stacked the
harvest of the skies,
Long lines of frozen, grimy cocks befouled
by city feet;
On either side the racing throngs, the crowding
cliffs, the cries,
And ceaseless winds that eddy down to whip
the iron street.

The wagons whine beneath their loads, the
raw-boned horses strain;
A hundred sullen shovels claw and heave the
sodden mass—­
There lifts no dust of scented moats, no cheery
call of swain,
Nor birds that pipe from border brush across
the yellow grass.

No cow-bells honk from upland fields, no sunset
thrushes call
To swarthy, bare-limbed harvesters beyond
the stubble roads;
But flanges grind on frosted steel, the weary
snow-picks fall,
And twisted, toiling backs are bent to pile the
bitter loads.

No shouting from the intervales, no singing from
the hill,
No scent of trodden tansy weeds among the
golden grain——­,
Only the silent, cringing forms beneath the
aching chill. 
Only the hungry eyes of want in haggard
cheeks of pain.

Flowers of the Sky

The snow was four feet deep beyond my door. 
(I never knew the cold so cruel before.)
The frost was white as death, and in the wood
Shattered the aching aisles of solitude. 
Here lay the winter wrapped about with gloom;
But overhead God’s flowers were in bloom!

  At dawn, above the ink-black trunks and night,
  A pale pink petal drifted with the light;
  And presently the gates of sun swung wide,
  And through them flowed a crimson, scented tide: 
  Roses that bloomed and bloomed again and died,
  Staining the lonely hills on either side.

  And scarce were God’s fields swept of this warm glow,
  When purest gold fell softly to the snow—­
  Petals of gold from where there rolled on high
  A sea of tulips lapping all the sky. 
  The blossoms clung so close I could not see
  One nook of empty blue where more could be.