GREY SYMPHONY

Up on the hillside a long row of larches

Shake from their grizzled Beards the vestiges of rain,

From grey-blue melting ice-slabs‘ neath their arches

The spring goes up again.

Writhing, exuding,

Up-steaming, streaming,

The earth is breathing to the sky

Wet clouds of spring.

Dim rosy fans, the trees

As they flick to and fro,

Seem driving greyish vapour

Over the snow.

The sky remodulates itself

From violet-grey to blue,

Under the upturned eaves of the blue larches

The sun looks through.

Now with the heat of the sun

The grey-blue ice-slabs quiver,

They slide in muddy trickles

Towards the river.

Up on the hillside between the long row of larches

Fume up from south pale clouds that bear the rain;

In pearl and violet arches

They break and shape again.