Page:Sour Grapes.djvu/27

 And here are the orchids!

Never having seen

such gaiety I will read these flowers for you:

This is an odd January, died—in Villon's time.

Snow, this is and this the stain of a violet

grew in that place the spring that foresaw its own doom.

And this, a certain July from Iceland:

a young woman of that place

breathed it toward the south. It took root there.

The colour ran true but the plant is small.

This falling spray of snowflakes is

a handful of dead Februarys

prayed into flower by Rafael Arevalo Martinez

of Guatemala.

Here's that old friend who

went by my side so many years: this full, fragile

head of veined lavender. Oh that April

that we first went with our stiff lusts

leaving the city behind, out to the green hill—

May, they said she was. A hand for all of us:

this branch of blue butterflies tied to this stem.

June is a yellow cup I'll not name; August

the over-heavy one. And here are—

russet and shiny, all but March. And March?

Ah, March—

Flowers are a tiresome pastime.

One has a wish to shake them from their pots

root and stem, for the sun to gnaw.