Classic Poem

Numbers in heaven grow
As trees constrained between
Air and tight soil resolve
Divided heart by dancing
To the supposed music of earth
But with thoughts birdwise away —
Imagining and motionless.
In heaven are such parliaments
Opinionating of eternity;
Other the forestry of hell
Where rugged communities of will,
In tawdry treedom spread as cities,
Their foliate hates make boundless night of.

But how — to instruct of heaven
And to use hell's name for hell,
And the time surely far off yet
To speak identical, word same as sense?
What is God and what the devil
If tree-metaphors suffice
To tell immediately of?
God is pale doubt, the devil bright denial.
Heaven perhaps next year, hell the last,
And the multitudes prophetic remnants
Of the millennial no-one.

And the time far off yet?
By less than any minute more,
By the slight scratching of the pen —
And to read the written story over,
Eyes still from trees green-fresh
And full of tangled nature
Still wondering which thing to be,
What's most and best and fruitfullest
When drops the lightning season
And all together's added up.

And will the sum be ever spelt
In other science than such numbers
Forward and backward bargaining
The errors with the answer?
The trees this year grow wide and tall,
The sun stands off great to watch,
And surely there's a world abroad
To which the world-end calling
Is a mere unseen humming, a voice
In the slow branches muffled,
Musing how long yet is to be not loud,
To be a breath outside time's lungs —
Uncalendared soft truth still.

But surely truth is very old,
Very old, all but learnt, all but taught?
Does myself confound, that I speak?
Do yourselves hinder, that you hear?
That in tree-grammar we converse,
Since trees beside myself and you are?
Shall we then put away the book
And you and me and close the schoolroom?
But the trees that this year a year
May still be languaging as if
The time were still far off yet?
The trees will come along, as fast
As slow as you came, coming
The pace it pleased you —
As the trees please, and you . . .

Else the time's gone like time
For walking out of time and into
Not-time, passing the trees by —
The trees, the present pleasantness
Of future future yet,
Not now or now, while life now lives,
Now lives, now lived — oh, coloured twilight,
Nearly immortal death.