DILEMMA OF THE ELM
In summer elms are made for me.I walk ignoring them and theyIgnore my walking in a wayI like in any elegant tree.
Fountain of the elm is shapeFor something I have felt and said. . . .In winter to hear the lonely scrapeOf rooty branches overhead
Should make me only half believeAn elm had ever a frond of green—Faced by the absence of a leafForget the fair elms I have seen.
(A wiry fountain, black uponThe little landscape, pale-blue with snow—Elm of my summer, obscurely goneTo leave me another elm to know.)
Instead, I paint it with my thought,Not knowing, hardly, that I do;The elm comes back I had forgotI see it green, absurdly new,
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