A Grain of Mustard Seed Read Online Free Page A

cloud.
    The way her dresses flowed!
    So once in Greece, so once…
    Passion and its control.
    She drew many a soul
    To join her in the dance.
    Give homage fierce as rage.
    Take your new-fangled beauties off the stage!

The Great Transparencies
    Lately I have been thinking much of those,
    The open ones, the great transparencies,
    Through whom life—is it wind or water?—flows
    Unstinted, who have learned the sovereign ease.
    They are not young; they are not ever young.
    Youth is too vulnerable to bear the tide,
    And let it rise, and never hold it back,
    Then let it ebb, not suffering from pride,
    Nor thinking it must ebb from private lack.
    The elders yield because they are so strong—
    Seized by the great wind like a ripening field,
    All rippled over in a sensuous sweep,
    Wave after wave, lifted and glad to yield,
    But whether wind or water, never keep
    The tide from flowing or hold it back for long.
    Lately I have been thinking much of these,
    The unafraid although still vulnerable,
    Through whom life flows, the great transparencies,
    The old and open, brave and beautiful…
    They are not young; they are not ever young.

Friendship: The Storms
    How much you have endured of storm
    Among sweet summer flowers!
    The black hail falls so hard to do us harm
    In my dark hours.
    Though friendship is not quick to burn,
    It is explosive stuff;
    The edge of our awareness is so keen
    A word is enough.
    Clouds rise up from the blue
    And darken the sky,
    And we are tossed about from false to true
    Not knowing why.
    After this violence is over
    I turn my life, my art,
    Round and around to discover
    The fault in my heart—
    What breeds this cruel weather,
    Why tensions grow;
    And when we have achieved so much together,
    What breaks the flow.
    God help us, friendship is aware
    That where we fail we learn;
    Tossed on a temperament, I meet you there
    At every turn.
    In this kaleidoscope
    Of work and complex living,
    For years you buttressed and enlivened hope,
    Laid balm on grieving.
    After the angry cloud has broken
    I know what you are—
    How love renews itself, spoken, unspoken,
    Cool as the morning star.

Evening Walk In France
    When twilight comes, before it gets too late,
    We swing behind us the heavy iron gate,
    And as it clangs shut, stand a moment there
    To taste the world, the larger open air,
    And walk among the grandeur of the vines,
    Those long rows written in imperfect lines,
    Low massive trunks that bear the delicate
    Insignia of leaves where grapes are set;
    And here the sky is a great roofless room
    Where late bees and late people wander home,
    And here we walk on slowly through the dusk
    And watch the long waves of the dark that mask
    Black cypresses far off, and gently take
    The sumptuous clouds and roofs within their wake,
    Until the solid nearer haystacks seem
    Like shadows looming ghostly out of dream,
    And the stone farm becomes an ancient lair,
    Dissolving into dusk—and is not there.
    A dog barks, and a single lamp is lit.
    We are two silent shadows crossing it.
    Under the lamp a woman stands at rest,
    Cutting a loaf of bread across her breast.

Dutch Interior
    Pieter de Hooch (1629-1682)
    I recognize the quiet and the charm,
    This safe enclosed room where a woman sews
    And life is tempered, orderly, and calm.
    Through the Dutch door, half open, sunlight streams
    And throws a pale square down on the red tiles.
    The cosy black dog suns himself and dreams.
    Even the bed is sheltered, it encloses,
    A cupboard to keep people safe from harm,
    Where copper glows with the warm flush of roses.
    The atmosphere is all domestic, human,
    Chaos subdued by the sheer power of need.
    This is a room where I have lived as woman,
    Lived too what the Dutch painter does not tell—
    The wild skies overhead, dissolving, breaking,
    And how that broken light is never still,
    And how the roar of waves is always near,
    What bitter tumult, treacherous and cold,
    Attacks the solemn charm year after year!
    It must be felt as peace won and