Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GREEN CLOISONNE, by ADELINE M. JENNEY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GREEN CLOISONNE, by                    
First Line: Now god be thanked for this stir from the south
Last Line: So much divine expectancy.
Subject(s): Art & Artists; Fields; God; Nature; Pastures; Meadows; Leas


Now God be thanked for this stir from the south
Upon my wintry eyelids and my mouth!
My breath comes with full rhythms of desire
That is assuaged only by life:
Only by work and song and love and wings
Of mating; by long, slant rain that brings
The misted opulence to flowering oats,
The russet curve to bearding barley,
The purpling glory where the wild bee gloats
Over alfalfa-covered hills
And spills
Her sibilence on scented air;
By sun that swings, some morn,
Intricate, spinning spokes of blue-green corn
Up from the lush, dark plush of sodden fields.

And God be thanked for this wide sweep of bright,
Blithe earth that curves around me and below,
Brimming with sunsweet, misty light!—
A consummate, loved artistry—a low,
Broad bowl of emerald cloisonne:
Its celled designs outlined
By tawny roads that wind
Up through deep-pastured hills;
By serrate shadows of the folded slopes;
By slim, long groves that press with blind
Obedience where the hidden, errant river wills.

Coiled in these bolder cloisons lie
The delicate, green filigrees wrought by
The miles on shimmering miles
Of multiple, wet wires and poles that lope
Off to the four horizons;
By the criss cross silver of the drenched barb wires;
By intermittent gleams
Of tiny, cattle-haunted streams;
By parallel, strong bars of rail,
Down which, just now, the orange train lets fly a smoky trail—
A misty, undulating band,
Now cut across, now fanned
By the blue-grey and silver
Of the prairie gulls that wheel and strive
With gay and swooping dive
For grubs bared by an unseen plow.
The sun lies like a lac of storied worth
Upon this bowl of earth,
Enameling the cloisons with transparent golds
Through which, within the central molds,
The colors glow a rich and lusty green;
But round the rim
They blend to limpid violets and dim
To deepest turquoise,
Which distance glosses to a mist
Of amathyst.

So may the dear Lord God be thanked thrice over
For this draught
Of Spring,
The beauty and the promise quaffed
From this most perfect, curving bowl of earth,
This artistry of vibrant, bright-green cloisonne!
I shall go down to toil with sacred mirth,
Since God has given to me
So much divine expectancy.





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