Classic Poem

This morning I went out to look for roses. Late,
O poppy lady, late, with the sun high, the sunlight hot — —
with only a little while before the leaves, yet dewy, would cease to glisten — —
I went out into the garden, alone.
I lingered there.
I searched there, long.
I found no roses — —
found not even their withered petals. All about the garden
I found their porcelain pericarps, but I had come too late — —
not of hour, but of day, to find the flowers that I sought. All, all were dead — —
I might have known.
I knew the time for the seeds of thistles, thoughtless, to ride the sportive winds.
I knew the time for the leaves of birches, cheerless, to sidle sadly away. Surely I knew
the time for the petals of roses, hopeless, to face their fate. I knew well — —
but had forgotten, for I seldom care
whether I find the rose bush all in bloom,
or past the bloom, or shedding leaves, or bare.

Too well I know the time that roses die.
By latter June too many of them fall.
Though many straggle on, throughout July,
by latter August all are dead. Not all — —
for years ago I found a lonely rose
alive when almost all the autumn leaves
lay dead, awaiting burial in the snows,
and when the rose bush cowered in the eaves, — —

But what of that?
What of the rose?
Give me the poppy.
Only this morning,
three scarlet poppies by the garden path
unfurled their flameous crepe, adroitly, archly, graciously, as if to greet
one who should come too late to find the rose.
Luring, like shecats fawning, at high spring — —
gaudy, like painted paphians good to seek — —
languorous, flushed, like bacchantes reveling — —
they waited by the path as it to speak,
as if to murmur things that women say
who say them subtly, waiting by the way, — —
women like you,
O poppy lady.

Strum the guitar. The little gusts that fret
so lowly in the dense veranda vines,
teasing the fumes that leave your cigarette,
and uttering their melancholy whines,
rail at the movements of the fitful hand
that pulls the dulcet fancies from the strings — —
now olden ditties plain to understand,
and now capricious, incoherent things.
I feel that you are suffering. Every breath
forcing the fumes upon the nervous gusts,
wails, in a way, prophetic of a death
now feared, now craved, of all the once dear lusts
ill with a tedium that I, too, know.
I understand your fitful maner. So — —
strum the guitar. I like the verandah vines — —
neglected and grown wild, and better thus — —
a lattice having none but godly lines.
Pan built the lattice, let me say, for us.
Here, peering if we will beyond the screen,
together we may watch the human mime.
Here we may laugh, if possible, unseen — —
or kiss. Could there be better place, or time?
I cannot laugh at what goes on outside;
nor can I weep, nor thrill to what I see.
Can you? What is the gesture, word, or stride,
that is not too well known to you or me?
I have been satiated to the full.
You are enthralling. But the mime is dull.

Strum the guitar. The clearness of your eyes — —
the very clearness of a tropic sea — —
discloses portions of a wreck that lies
too deep for salvage or recovery,
a treasure ship once laden to the prow
with gold, choice wines, rich fabrics, and a host
of rare diaphanous gems, but riding low — —
too low, and doomed to end among the lost.
Perchance it foundered in a peaceful swell — —
rudder or sail neglected for long dreams.
Or in a stormy trough, when lightning fell,
too quickly sundering the straining beams.
I wish that it had drifted, to this day.
I wish that it were yet to drift my way.

Strum the guitar.
I want no more of what men call their faith.
I want no more of what men call their hope.
Strum the guitar.
I want diversion — —
sustenance for the beggared hours, famished, slowly dying, slowly tottering off to die;
not that they be rejuvenated, no — —
but that they shall not perish as they go.
I loathe them all.
Strum the guitar.
Sustain one hour,
if only one, that it may thrill, not pall — —
thrill as by suasion of your luring flower.
Strum the guitar. Play, poppy lady, play
the tunes that go with waiting by the way.