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I 

That fine white burst of bush blossom 
Has come again. Blast 
ing through the winter crust 
And scattering the afterbirth of spring, 
            It crept to us from under the eave 
            Through the dark cloak of winter’s sleeve 
            The brutal blossoms break and heave 
            And smash the antique, lacquered leaves; 
And I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 

Can’t you smell the violence of it— 
            the banditry of birth? 
In that reckless resurrection 
            fair boughs burn 
            and fair boughs glint 
The menace of spring’s silence. 

II 

            The smallness of it all makes one wonder; 
            the sitting on a smooth bank 
            in the river smell and sun 
            and ants and grass 
            tickling up the sleeve. 
             The dry kiss 
            and the moist kiss. 
            The baby reeling through the grass on reckless legs 
            and you 
            stretching, head back amid the rubble of our feast, 
            reaching beyond me for the tiny sun 
blink 

                                    you are gone with the flick of an eye 

                                                blink 
            gone are the empty cartons of a summer day 

            blink 
gone is the shameless sun. 
Suddenly my child stands before the tiny sun 
a giant shadow before the tiny sun 
and I can see that in his reeling quest for age 
            he has stolen my years 
            and shatters in the prism of my tears 
            and with the tiny river I am young no more. 

III

Now that smoky Tuesday is past 
We have shelved the patchwork counterpane 
And closed the camphor chest. 
The world melts through wet windows; 
The chill warm wash of rain 
Brushes down the shingle siding. 

            In this room — 
            In the weary hum of silence 
            I sit cross-legged in the gloom 
            Before the dusty delicacy of family china 
            In its glass-faced tomb. 

IV 

In the thin part of the afternoon 
When light, like a loved child, 
Is gone too soon and Earth shrinks small 
And cold like the breast of an aging mother, 
I discover myself on the other 
Side — the thin black back 
Of a mercury mirror, too cold 
For quick, too black 
For silver, 
Where once I stood 
Behind a parent’s brooding oaken dresser 
Hiding from an afternoon of childhood. 
Hiding from both 
The fact and the reflection.