John Shaw Neilson

The Orange Tree

The young girl stood beside me.
I Saw not what her young eyes could see:
—A light, she said, not of the sky
 Lives somewhere in the Orange Tree.
 
—Is it, I said, of east or west?
 The heartbeat of a luminous boy
Who with his faltering flute confessed
 Only the edges of his joy?
 
Was he, I said, borne to the blue
 In a mad escapade of Spring
Ere he could make a fond adieu
 To his love in the blossoming?
 
—Listen! the young girl said.  There calls
 No voice, no music beats on me;
But it is almost sound: it falls
This evening on the Orange Tree.
 
—Does he, I said, so fear the Spring
 Ere the white sap too far can climb?
See in the full gold evening
 All happenings of the olden time?
 
Is he so goaded by the green?
 Does the compulsion of the dew
Make him unknowable but keen
 Asking with beauty of the blue?
 
—Listen! the young girl said.  For all
 Your hapless talk you fail to see
There is a light, a step, a call
 This evening on the Orange Tree.
 
—Is it, 1 said, a waste of love
Imperishably old in pain,
Moving as an affrighted dove
Under the sunlight or the rain?
 
Is it a fluttering heart that gave
Too willingly and was reviled?
Is it the stammering at a grave,
The last word of a little child?
 
—Silence! the young girl said.  Oh, why,
Why will you talk to weary me?
Plague me no longer now, for I
Am listening like the Orange Tree.
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