A settlement of love
Is what I’d risk if you would.
A central fountain and a horse,
A little native elegance,
Some green-shuttered saffron buildings
And avenues of leaning trees
And an orchard close by
Divided from a field of hay
By a mouldering old wall
Snaking up a hill.
I’d have a garden primed
With beanflowers and chick peas
And in tubs lemon trees
Not to forget the marveled orange—
Where is a fruit so bright
And a stem so delicate?—
And days of blue air
That crowd the dark boughs of a grove
And other days as pale
As light in a birch grove—
Oh birch my very white
And original delight!
And back of us and all around
For the castle-haunting rooks
To fly to and fro from
The many-sided, dark-blue faced
Mountains, wrinkled, ravined, cleft
When they are not cast upon
By those pallors that beyond
Tell of a snowlight’s origin.
And in this civil order
Ringed round by a wilderness
I’d have some very conical
And shaggy house of hay
To invite you in to stay
As long as butter-yellow walls pleased you
And there you’d be with me
We’d live in a monument of hay
Mad as those who know
In love is all fantasy.
Your breast would be of burning gold
And its delicious heat
Would warm me day and night
While creatures of the wood
Might envy, if they could,
Our joy just as fine
As the improvising clouds
That as you look at them are gone
Or volatile as leaves in wind.
We’d go bird-nesting in clouds
And hunting down the meadow grass
For flowers or the smallest haunts
Of the young field mice.
And in this ancient landscape
Preponderant with moss,
Rambling walls and pinewoods
Of narrow alleys at the end of which
Daylight stares starkly through,
Our love alone would be new
Despite its ancient properties.
A
(Jean Garrigue)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Light Poems, Youth Poems, Garden Poems, Horse Poems, Envy & Jealousy Poems, Property PoemsBased on Keywords: starkly, volatile, marveled, snaking, pallors, pinewoods, many-sided, conical, improvising, ravined, green-shuttered