page 26

Alpines

Away with you, plausible rhymes, that come to me unbidden;
I listen for little sounds that are shy and hidden:
Away to the poets’ pastures, all too mettlesome steeds;
Halting, pausing footsteps suffice for my needs.

Only to echo for a moment
The rock-garden’s toy-symphony.

To voice the persistence of a sessile veronica
Or the pearly shadows of a dwarf campanula.

The peeping of a shy saxifrage
Or a stone-pillowed androsace.

But how to perpetuate—
(Stockstill now and awestruck)
By means of any hieroglyph,
The deep, the living azure of the dark blue gentian?