A Summer Commentary

--Yvor Winters

When I was young, with sharper sense,

The farthest insect cry I heard

Could stay me: through the trees, intense,

I watched the hunter and the bird.

Where is the meaning that I found?

Or was it but a state of mind,

Some old penumbra of the ground,

In which to be but not to find?

Now summer grasses, brown with heat,

Have crowded sweetness through the air;

The very roadside dust is sweet;

Even the unshadowed earth is fair.

The soft voice of the nesting dove,

And the dove in soft erratic flight

Like a rapid hand within a glove,

Caress the silence and the light.

Amid the rubble, the fallen fruit,

Fermenting in its rich decay,

Smears brandy on the trampling boot

And sends it sweeter on its way.