A Letter For All-Hallows(1949)
Burden
I called you because I could not stand alone
looking north to that skyline-
tree globed with its yellow apples
balancing like a fountain of planets
in the bright light and the blue air.
And because on the way there
I looked at a smooth cirque 0circle
the brook had worn in a stone;
and nothing as soft as water
could, by taking care,
have so pestled 0 and polishedpounded
that granite mortar; only
by a thousand years of indifference,
of aiming elsewhere.
I wish we might do—or no,
look back and find we had done—
some un-advertized thing,
overwhelming and un-self-aware
as water streamlining a stone, or a tree's
kindling in an empty meadow
its casual Hesperides.6
1978