If only you had come

This snap is of the River Taff, in Cardiff, where I've spent a couple of work-related days ...

... weather was truly wonderful (as you can see!) and although it's not quite yet July, I was reminded of this Philip Freund poem, taken from his 1950 poetry volume entitled, "Private Speech":


July Night

Our dream stirs in the pool and ripples start;
Or else the bending willows have knelt down
To touch the still, pale water's lily face.
Tendrils of air have wound a thousand scents
And tighten at my throat, or speak unchaste
As lilac's purple clusters in embrace,
With smooth curled fingers that have reached to seek
The pollen's heart.
If only you had come,
The spent and wasted fragrance would be caught
And twisted to our meaning, and drawn tense !
The peony, black seeding in the night,
Splits to its fleshy aril. Love is lost,
While all the dusk's laid scent spreads petal white.
Or by the pool remember, after frost
The Autumn passion of chrysanthemum
That bore its great bronze-golden head, wind-tossed !

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Philip Freund (1909 - 2007)

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