The Orange Tree

The young girl stood beside me. I

Saw not what her young eyes could see:

- A light, she said, not of the sky

Lives somewhere in the Orange Tree.

- Is it, I said, of east or west?

The heart beat of a luminous boy

Who with his faltering flute confessed

Only the edges of his joy?

- Was he, I said, home to the blue

In a mad escapade of Spring

Ere he could make a fond adieu

To his love in the blossoming?

- Listen! The young girl said. There calls

No voice, no music beats on me;

But it is almost sound: it falls

This evening on the Orange Tree.

- Does he, I said, so fear the Spring

Ere the white sap too far can climb?

See in the full gold evening

All happenings of the olden time?

Is he so goaded by the green?

Does the compulsion of the dew

Make him unknowable but keen

Asking with beauty of the blue?

- Listen! The young girl said. For all

Your hapless talk you fail to see

There is a light, a step, a call,

This evening on the Orange Tree.

- Is it, I said, a waste of love

Imperishably old in pain,

Moving as an affrighted dove

Under the sunlight or the rain?

Is it a fluttering heart that gave

Too willingly and was reviled?

Is it the stammering at a grave,

The last word of a little child?

- Silence! The young girl said. Oh why,

Why will you talk to weary me?

Plague me no longer now, for I

Am listening like the Orange Tree.