Classic Poem

I

The little negro girl who lives across the alley
Brings back a red geranium from church;
She repeats her little formulae of God.

Geraniums, geraniums
On a third-floor window sill.
Their perfume comes
With the smell of heat
From the asphalt street.
Geraniums geraniums
Withered and dry
Long laid by
In the sweepings of the memory.

The little negro girl across the alley
Brings a geranium from Sunday school.

II

Daffodils
Long yellow sunlight fills
The cool secluded room
Swept and set in order —
Smelling of earth and rain.
And again
The insistent sweet perfume
And the impressions it preserves
Irritate the imagination
Or the nerves.