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The poet
          measures his anxiety
                    in the glabrous leaf,
or the conspicuous white of May.
So much is a dream
          of orange yellow autumn
                              mountains,
so much is the inconspicuous
nerve rending of solitude
where the garden begins, or ends,
          ---the shrub teaching
                    the exhilaration of retreat,
perhaps a rest,
          perhaps the deciduous
                    invention of time.
One must carefully walk
          these paths,
for the color burns,
and the acid underfoot
commemorates
an ethereal disappearance.
Nothing speaks easily---
          of possession
or of the authentic river
and that special case,
that indeterminable event
beyond the light of darkness.
So the shrub awakens
          a spontaneous proof
                    of kinship in moist
soil, shadows and sun,
and every resolution
          can only be true
                    or false.