Boyhood's end

What, then, did I want? What did I ask to have?

If the question had been put to me then,

and if I had been capable of expressing what was in me,

I should have replied:

I want only to keep what I have.

To rise each morning and look out on the sky

and the grassy dew-wet Earth,

from day to day, from year to year.

To watch each June and July for spring,

to feel the same old sweet surprise and delight

at th'appearance of each familiar flower,

ev'ry new-born insect, ev'ry bird

returned once more from the north.

To listen in a trance of delight

to the wild notes of the golden plover

coming once more to the great plain,

flying south, flock succeeding flock

the whole day long.

Oh, those wild beautiful cries of the golden plover!

I could exclaim with Hafiz with but one word changed:

If after a thousand years

that sound should float o'er my tomb,

my bones uprising in their gladness

would dance in the sepulchre.

To climb trees and put my hand down

in the deep hot nest of the Bienteveo

and feel the hot eggs,

the five long-pointed cream coloured eggs,

with choc'late spots and splashes at the larger end.

To lie on a grassy bank, with the blue water

between me and beds of tall bulrushes,

list'ning to the mysterious sounds of the wind

and of hidden rails and coots and courlands

conversing together in strange human-like tones;

to let my sight dwell and feast

on the camaloté flower

amid its floating masses of moist vivid green leaves,

the large almanda-like flower of a purest divine yellow

that, when plucked, leaves you with nothing

but a green stem in your hand. To ride at noon

on the hottest days when the whole Earth is a-glitter

with illusory water and see the cattle and horses

in thousands cov'ring the plain

at their watering places,

to visit some haunt of large birds

at that still, hot hour

and see storks, ibises, grey herons,

egrets of a dazzling whiteness

and rose-coloured spoon-bills

and flamingoes standing in the shallow water

in which their motionless forms are reflected.

To lie on my back on the rust-brown grass in January,

to gaze up at the wide hot whity-blue sky,

peopled with millions and myriads of glist'ning balls

of thistledown, ever floating by.

To gaze and gaze, until they are to me living things,

and I, in an ecstasy am with them,

floating in that immense shining void!