Alice
O. Howell
A pleasant English summer a life ago
A pleasant English summer a life ago --
a weaving of ovals green
above the riverflow
a dappling of those chips of blue
and gold below
all from a summerswifted evening glow –
a bending of the fluted waving grasses
where the carapaced slow beetle walks
lurching its scarabed angles
through the stalks
wrens in the dusty hedgerows
wagtails, linnets, buntings
darting soundlessly about a
somnolence of sheep
marking the leys of our longing now
to sleep –
oh, what were we waiting for
those summerhays ago
lying aneath the beeches
near the river's summerglow!
The old manse, the pilgrims' eaves
and bedding by the silvers of the starcut leaves
still life, life still
our faces framed by hands and leaning each to each
hushes, whispers, hushes on our tongues
as we let each other in
reaching for -- so simply, softly, softly –
the sweetness of each other's skin
what were our pleasures then
drowsing the lovelit night
waking to the scattered pealing
of a morning's feathered light!
marigolds and hollyhocks and
dew-drenched bending roses
flax, weld and foxglove
and the river moving time along
reflecting and collecting
all that lovely, lovely summersong
thinking now in winter
of our older saddened eyes
parted and yet joined
by grey and sodden city skies
I pluck insistence so
from that which summering in dreams
while ever singing deeper, deems
to bear us forth where heaven seems
still flashing in the endless rippling riverflow:
all love that time would let us know
that pleasant English summer, only a life ago.