A Madrigal: For Judith

MISTS that hung in the valleys trail their heads
Upward in amber crowns
Of lonely clouds.
All earth arises singing from its beds:
Lambs in the flowered leaves,

Goldfinches out of their sunstruck nest, the fox
Red in his limestone cone,
Freckled pheasants
Fluttering over tall grass, all sleepy flocks
Dallying into the daylight.

Praising the sun, a red-winged blackbird floats
bp from the gray horizon
On flaming wings,
While woodland lilies lift their yellow throats
Out of the thorny cliffs.

Full tide, how noon descends, the burning flare
Engulfing everyone,
A sea of sun
Washing the night-cooled earth with violet air
Still cupped in woven willows.

Grazing with hunger on that grass-cool face,
Tall sun embraces lawn
With shining hands,
The passive sunlight hungry in its grace
Among those silken limbs.

Smooth patios in shadow call us out
Further into the sun
Until our homes
Flower beyond our present laugh and shout
Into the southern woodlands;

As evening waits upon the sunlight there,
Dusk edges up the trunks
Of t roes and moves
Across all hollows, draws, invading where
Frail copper bells of leaves

Dangle in pale designs. Skirting the long
Meadows open to sun,
One golden plunge
Over the precipice concludes this song
And all its shadowy loves.