Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SPRING IN ORIZABA, by MARIAN STORM


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SPRING IN ORIZABA, by                    
First Line: Those were afternoons! - with chipi-chipi falling
Last Line: Kindling from its very torch that running green fire?
Subject(s): Orizaba, Mexico; Spring


Those were afternoons! -- with chipi-chipi falling,
A dusk of water on the jungle land,
Bringing out the orchids like butterflies in the treetops,
Cooling with lilies the winter-fevered sand.

Was there ever such an insolence of growing
As that green splendor from the canyons profound? --
Uprush of life and leap of white water
And yellow mangos lavished on the ground!

Those were mornings! -- when the tuberoses proffered
A thousand silver vases of fragrance to the sun,
When calla lilies held brave congress at the brookside
And the great ivory moonflowers broke one by one.

What nights we knew! Like a red bird nesting
The sun plunged downward through the long banana frouds,
And there came a darkness perfect as the last will be,
Sudden and bleessed on the garden ponds.

Or the moon floating up brought the mother of the mountains
Her whitest jewels till she shone out to sea.
It found wild cotton in the deep barrancas,
Frosted the palm-slopes with unreality.

Nothing in the north will help me to forget it!
Up through the hot-lands higher and swiftly higher,
Was it not life itself that quivered resplendent,
Kindling from its very torch that running green fire?





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