LITERATURE and LIFE

Otago Witness, Issue 4032, 23 June 1931, Page 64

LITERATURE and LIFE

NIGHT PIECE. Dimmed are the flowers now. And no birds sing From the gnarled bough Where apples swing. No more the impish Cloud-shadows play "Where silver fish In mirrors lay. And overhead From unseen skies Ring owls’ instead Of curlews’ cries. Dew-shimmering clings The gossamer Where jewel-spun wings And bees’ feet were. Only a far song Tells how passes The wind among The marram grasses. The firmament That gemmed the lawn Ere the sun spent His light, has gone. To star those heights As he had done— A million lights To shine for one. —A. R. Übsdell, in the Fortnightly Review. TWIN PINE. Your branches think in terms of layered .. rocks Wherein your roots dig down, or of these lean, Long bars of cloud at dusk which your green shocks Of porcupine so frequently have seen. . Twin trunks from one; reptilian limbs that toil— To join or part them? Or do they insist On some dream pattern that the seasons foil? What may attain that this frustration missed? Alive with wind that grows a part of you, You press against the hill through rain .. and drought A tuning fork the ground is listening to; One some capricious age has hammered out. Yet winds were not what warped you; light is stronger; ...... Winds never twist a tree as does light- ' hunger.

(•—lsrael Newman, in the New York Sun.