Reims

Hazel C Hutchison

I had forgotten birch-trees.
Birch-trees I think are the cool thin sound
Earth likes to make when it is weary
Of shouting mountains, screaming waterfalls,
And chanting hot tremulous plains.

I had forgotten slim white trees,
Beating a silvery rhythm
Upon the gray insistence
Of autumn twilight.

I should have stayed away
From this motionless forest of stone.
Here is the same pale frozen music;
And above, in the dark somewhere,
A bird too—screaming.