LILACS AND CRAB-APPLES IN BLOSSOM

LILACS AND CRAB-APPLES IN BLOSSOM

 

Lilacs and crab-apples in blossom

and here and there a wild cherry

abandoned in an old farmyard

like an unfashionable chandelier

that kept on dancing with itself

long after the stars went out.

If for nothing else I was born

to tell the trees how beautiful they are.

What an elegance and grace of earth.

Embodiments of time in the concrete.

Brides at the weddings of matter.

The solid become real. Mind

when it gives up looking for itself.

Fountains and clouds.

Life whispering into its own ear

about the birds and the bees

in a native language of its own

that blooms like the demotic tongues

of a Babylonian renaissance

that doesn’t need a translation.

Life says so much without meaning to.

 

PATRICK WHITE