| Wet almond-trees, in the rain, |
| Like iron sticking grimly out of earth
; |
| Black almond trunks, in the rain, |
| Like iron implements twisted, hideous,
out of the earth, |
| Out of the deep, soft fledge of
Sicilian winter-green, |
| Earth-grass uneatable, |
Almond trunks curving blackly,
iron-dark, climbing the slopes.
|
| Almond-tree, beneath the terrace rail, |
| Black, rusted, iron trunk, |
| You have welded your thin stems finer, |
| Like steel, like sensitive steel in the
air, |
| Grey, lavender, sensitive steel,
curving thinly and brittly up in a parabola. |
| What are you doing in the December rain
? |
| Have you a strange electric
sensitiveness in your steel tips ? |
| Do you feel the air for electric
influences |
| Like some strange magnetic apparatus ? |
| Do you take in messages, in some
strange code, |
| From heaven’s wolfish, wandering
electricity, that prowls so constantly round Etna ? |
| Do you take the whisper of sulphur from
the air ? |
| Do you hear the chemical accents of the
sun ? |
| Do you telephone the roar of the waters
over the earth ? |
And from all this, do you make
calculations ?
|
| Sicily, December’s Sicily in a mass of
rain |
| With iron branching blackly, rusted
like old, twisted implements |
| And brandishing and stooping over
earth’s wintry fledge, climbing the slopes |
Of uneatable soft green !
|
| D.H.
Lawrence |
Classic Poems |
| |
|
[ The Mosquito ] [ Bare Almond Trees ] [ Humming Bird ] [ Kangaroo ] [ Snake ] [ Figs ] [ Eagle in New Mexico ] [ Wages ] |
