The Cider Apple
byYou never take my words how they are meant.
Even I can sometimes be made sad,
Seeing in my sentence meaning bent
To satisfy the whims of one quite mad.
Even I can sometimes be made sad,
Revealing meaning madder than is sent.
Do you have to warp my words with malevolent intent?
Asking this, no lover could be glad.
Yes, even I can sometimes be made sad.
The master of my fate is not the wind.
O tell me you will help me shape the signs,
Design the stands, or else rescind.
Always I will count on you to help me trim the vines:
Years rush by, fair mistress Rosalind.
Though I shall not forget, my love, the words that we have said,
Or leave aside my rabbits to defend
My sad mistakes. Our happiness, my love, has long since fled,
Our twosomeness at last is at an end.
Remember this: that unlike you I never could pretend.
Rosalind, in cotton wrap your head
Or lie beside me now upon our bed;
When love is gone, remain no less my friend!
ENVOI
Now, Rosalind, our love is at an end.
Under the cloistered stars think yet of me.
Now love is gone, remain no less my friend!
Each grain of sand that passes through the glass
Each curling drip of wax upon the candle
Releases wasted seconds; growing grass
In flooded fields where drowning cattle pass
Electrifies me faster than the sand will.
The sight of sinking tractors fills my heart
Reviving memories once thought forgotten
Of my youth among the cornfields, by the cart
Made luscious by the trappings of my art.
But we were always saddest when the wheaten ear was rotten.
O, I was sadder still when she who dressed in cotton
Neglected all the cowsheds, and the pig-sties quite apart
Eschewed; her memories are quite forgotten.
Crumbling now, the outhouse has decayed,
Animals therein have made their homes:
There untended, they will die. The lease repayed
Has not been seen again. And now there roams
About the farm no herdsman and no milking maid
Yearning for each other 'midst the bromes.
The churns are standing empty in the yard,
Red revolvers lie unused at home,
And I shall throw away the bullets, for now no pard
Can wend its sticky way across the loam.
In feeble boats the farm-folk sail the foam,
Now heavy-high, now often light and hard,
Going, now their fields are flooded, to find some drier home.