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59
from
In Plain Air
(1982)
And let me in these Shades compose
Something in Verse as true as Prose.
-- pope
Autumn: Island
after Jorge Guillén
Autumn, an island
with a severe
profi le, watches the combers with their crests
that waver, race forward
to their glistening destruction.
A love for line, and
the grapevine is stripped
of its overlapping green
and a small basket
fi lled with clusters
out of -- good luck: sealed in them
a balancing of dreams
about things possible.
From secret high spirits
a clean style; wisdom the more defi nite
as it becomes the more inconspicuous, a plain
branch above the hurrying colors.