Jonathan Finch
PAST
Pale (for the wanded spring) pear-blossom
blossoms white
from a shilly-shallying edge
of pink. I am on the brink, the rim of a wood,
with two mallard and a sorrel pond between me
and the dilly-dallying girl whose dark hair
waves like a plume of black fire. It is here
(where I stoke pyre, hovel, bag mice)
here that the dark nightshade beads its brooding berries
(you are light, my dear, you who almost skate on ice
over these woodlands) – here, though, your past
comes into me like a measured lance.
Ah, do not, do not, offer me so much
with twenty blossoming trees around you so.
Do not. The seed is low.
And I? I only know anger,
recklessness, a bare wire
where the goads of your past
buzz and secrete in the mire.
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