Oxford
It was not the age, nor the beauty
of the worn stone and iron,
the medieval lancets and
crenellated towers and walls.
I am not so taken, e9s well, by symbols:
the pelicans and monsters, unicorns
and witherless ponies.
Distantly, I admire the craftsmanship, can even
translate it to, but not start it from,
the heart.
I distrust the space between
art and act, between
symbol and need.
But I did trust somehow the little boxes, the
little pans hung from windows
in which stood the pink-faced geraniums, the
purple and white petunias,
the glossy-leathered begonias and fuchsias—
these, and a clean lawn
with ancient trees:
oak crutched and saved,
opening upon red cows
afloat in the blue distance.
And other colors, too,
banks and borders of lettuce and chard
green flowering among the bright
lights of cosmos and dahlias,
dusty millers a gray mist
for red-chalk and cream nicotiana
to spear up out of, pennants
for a Near Sawrey world
of squirrels and rabbits and
these, also, saved, allowed,
kept by someone
who beyond reverence for the dead, beyond
reverence for the abstract, reveres
the particular living, and beyond reverence
gets the pasturing done, the
cattle and sheep in, the plants
watered, the world loved.
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