The scent of blackberries, the sound of yellowing leaves, Or moments as tender, but far less forgetful:

Italian moonlight clinging to the creepers on

A castle wall, falling across a rampart where we sat Side by side, gazing across the plain.

The beauty and meaning of life lay in these, And all these you have loved: the Moroccan coast, The long daily swims to the lonely rocks, the sun On the incessant foam, the bitterness of salt spray, The intriguing identity of each grain of sand

Not yet hurled into the stagnant flood of existence;

The year at Cambridge, sharing Theocritus, Shelly, Verlaine, The atmosphere so charged that all carried subtle meaningA word, the slender book of poems lying on a desk, The tennis clothes tossed upon the bed after the return

From the courts, the feel of a scarf,

A weekend at St. Cloud, a silent room, two faces

Revealed for a moment by the light of a match;

A sudden sense of grief at leaving this place,

At surrendering this moment where a lighted match

Was all that seemed to matter. The night swim at Capri, The air so mild that we slipped from the boat

Into the water of the grotto and watched while

The circles from the oars melted into the darkness.

The walk into the mountains at the Jungfrau,

Torrents rushing and foaming down the hillside opposite, Carrying with them small rocks, clusters of leaves,

Small twigs, debris of long frozen months;

Fog, a silver veil, hanging over the woods, Vanishing as the sun grew stronger; The pause for rest beneath the trees, Sharing the landscape with you, knowing That a landscape is a state of the spirit, A constant longing for what is to come,

A reflection incomparably detailed and ingenious Of what is everlasting in us.

Ah, Howard, if my heart were open to your view,

All those landscapes and more would come rippling out One after another, filled with sunlight,

Filled with the sound of laughter and of brooks,

Filled with the scent of grass and of the wind,

Filled with accidental caresses, with the shelter of foliage, Filled with trivial things that could change a life: A distant sail on a lake, a stranger on a beach, Losing one's way one evening in an alien street, A smiling face glimpsed in some southern village, And the walk in New Forest after sunset, listening To the leaves grow alert before this storm.

-Patrick George

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