August

When my eyes are weeds

And my lips are petals, spinning

Down the wind that has beginning

Where the crumpled beeches start

In a fringe of salty reeds

When my arms are elder-bushes

And the rangy lilac pushes

Upward, upward through my heart



Summer, do your worst!

Light your tinsel moon, and call on

Your performing stars to fall on

Headlong through your paper sky

Nevermore shall I be cursed

By a flushed and amorous slattern

With her dusty laces' pattern

Trailing, as she straggles by