Three Variants

1

When in front of you hangs the day with its

Smallest detail-fine or crude-

The intensely hot cracking squirrel-sounds

Do not cease in the resinous wood.

The high line of pine-trees stands asleep,

Drinking in and storing strength,

And the wood is peeling and drip by drip

Is shedding freckled sweat.

2

From miles of calm the garden sickens,

The stupor of the angered glen

Is more alarming than an evil

Wild storm, a frightful hurricane.

The garden's mouth is dry, and smells of

Decay, of nettles, roofing, fear…

The cattle's bellowing is closing

Its ranks. A thunderstorm is near.

3

On the bushes grow the tatters

Of disrupted clouds; the garden

Has its mouth full of damp nettles:

Such - the smell of storms and treasures.

Tired shrubs are sick of sighing.

Patches in the sky increase. The

Barefoot blueness has the gait of

Cautious herons in the marshes.

And they gleam, like lips that glisten,

When the hand forgets to wipe them:

Supple willow-switches, oak-leaves,

And the hoofprints by the horsepond.