Four Poems

I

Aunt Ida

hours I stood upon your terrace

watched the one light of the world

harass the flowers

are frantic to live

Aunt Ida

T have no terrace, upon me

stand only the hours of others, alas,

to cherish

Aunt Ida

let me on your terrace last

more hours than the many I have not

been fast and frantic for living.

As I was going to sleep one night rather full of woe and home-

sickness, I remembered the old days at Tante Ida's; I remem-

bered damp rainy days comfortably drowsed away in her lovely

parlor and how after the rain I would step out on her back

terrace and look out over the ravine. and the woods and the

whole washed world; and on the yellowish flagstones would be

small pools of cool water and the green leaves would be limp

with it, and I would be limp with it, feeling as though I had

passed through another world in order to get at this somewhat

blurred and undecided but beautiful moment. Over the ravine

the faint sky was as unhampered as a shadow; everything was

as quiet as only the imagination could make it, and I, uncon-

sciously, quite without will, wished that I could be a color or

something clean and atmospheric; and all space slowly came

around me then, and at least I was something that had grown

there for many years.

Villa Baldini, Italy, December, 1944

u

Where shall we begin with Love?

Let us begin the beginning of it.

And is that at its bottom?

Oh, no, that even is above all!

mu

It is a long time.

What is along Time?

Life, of course.

That is too bad, isn't it?

Yes, for it becomes too battered then.

GEORGE JOHN

Iv

Which has it?

What?

The fairest tree-region.

Eternity, of course, for there Time and the Sun are indivisibly

one and sublime and uncoarse and its upheaval of green is serene

and enduring for sure nor can ever shrivel or hide itself but must

incessantly fill the sky with its willing and wide and elated fruit;

without the great furor and hurry though of our more harassed

and worried world-seasons, and that is why this shall be so

unbelievably best at last!

George John