When I see birches bend to left and right |
1 |
Across the lines of straighter darker trees, |
|
I like to think some boy's been swinging them. |
|
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. |
|
As ice storms do. Often you must have seen them |
5 |
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning |
|
After a rain. They click upon themselves |
|
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured |
|
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. |
|
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells |
10 |
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust |
|
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away |
|
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. |
|
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, |
|
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed |
15 |
So low for long, they never right themselves: |
|
You may see their trunks arching in the woods |
|
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground, |
|
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair |
|
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. |
20 |
But I was going to say when Truth broke in |
|
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm, |
|
I should prefer to have some boy bend them |
|
As he went out and in to fetch the cows-- |
|
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, |
25 |
Whose only play was what he found himself, |
|
Summer or winter, and could play alone. |
|
One by one he subdued his father's trees |
|
By riding them down over and over again |
|
Until he took the stiffness out of them, |
30 |
And not one but hung limp, not one was left |
|
For him to conquer. He learned all there was |
[32-33] |
To learn about not launching out too soon |
|
And so not carrying the tree away |
|
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise |
35 |
To the top branches, climbing carefully |
|
With the same pains you use to fill a cup |
|
Up to the brim, and even above the brim. |
|
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, |
|
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. |
40 |
So was I once myself a swinger of birches. |
|
And so I dream of going back to be. |
|
It's when I'm weary of considerations, |
|
And life is too much like a pathless wood |
|
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs |
45 |
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping |
|
From a twig's having lashed across it open. |
|
I'd like to get away from earth awhile |
|
And then come back to it and begin over. |
|
May no fate willfully misunderstand me |
50 |
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away |
|
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: |
|
I don't know where it's likely to go better. |
|
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree |
|
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk |
55 |
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, |
|
But dipped its top and set me down again. |
|
That would be good both going and coming back. |
|
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. |
|