Come all you harps, blow a little tune
For me, since often the wind is accustomed
With shrill voice to announce
The stretchings of winter, and then the chill
Spreads over fields, and the grasses take cover
In fresh piles of wanton snow, which drifts about
Not unlike dust, not unlike tarrying
Mist, most like to breathless
Stirrings of foam in the freezing air. So too in spring
A gentle Zephyr, yet the sun's
Harsh master, tasks him into quick running
And early mornings,
And nor does he burn in his injured pride,
Since the Zephyr whips him gently into gentle shape;
In this form he glides among the soft heavens
So the clouds take delight, the ether
Soothes the blight of winter, and inspires fresh buds
To poke from their long-droughted nests with a splendorous candor;
All forms of animals too are beloved, and poke for themselves
New offspring: the burdened ewe lies down
Delivering twins, the hope of a flock, while the shepherd
Stretches out under pear blossoms and fills the hills
With his resonous chant. In the summer, often
Lightning bolts break into throaty peals of thunder
Too, nor do they ever strike in the same place,
But raging over the fields, now an old oak,
Habitat for the dove's nest and the owl, that stood on the edge
Of the grainful fields, is hit, and the fire spreads,
Ruin of farmers, across the tall crops, and crackles,
And sends up fleshy zithers, and the tree --
Which often, wizened, the plower had considered
Cutting and stripping of stalks, bark, to split
For the fuels of cold winter -- burns itself out
And keeps the parched hot, but in a different way;
And now they stake at a distant hill: the clouds,
Hungry for sunlight, flood the plains
In midnight, and the arching strike branches
And blooms warring spurs of a white haze, purple madness;
The shepherd, hidden in a cave, or tall
In his tree's tutelation (an unsafe horizon)
Watches in wonder, and his far-wandering charges
Quake. In fall there are sibilant leaves, which have not taken care
Only for singing, but change into feral
Pageantry: the aspens are silver, the ashes blush,
And tawny gold glides in the breeze. So,
Harps, now that you've seen
The seasons making their dreadful way through the earth,
Rampaging, plundering, burning, with nothing untouched,
Isn't it all the better for you to strike spider-spun chords,
And to mirror by the resonant pitch of your exhalant bark
All the shifts and turns of winding eternity's change?