LETTER FROM TOWN: THE     

       ALMOND TREE     

 YOU promised to send me some violets. Did you forget? White ones and blue ones from under the orchard hedge? Sweet dark purple, and white ones mixed for a pledge Of our early love that hardly has opened yet. Here there's an almond tree—you have never seen Such a one in the north—it flowers on the street, and I stand Every day by the fence to look up for the flowers that expand At rest in the blue, and wonder at what they mean. Under the almond tree, the happy lands Provence, Japan, and Italy repose, And passing feet are chatter and clapping of those Who play around us, country girls clapping their hands. You, my love, the foremost, in a flowered gown, All your unbearable tenderness, you with the laughter Startled upon your eyes now so wide with here-           after, You with loose hands of abandonment hanging down. 

  

  

       FLAT SUBURBS, S.W., IN THE     

       MORNING     

 THE new red houses spring like plants In level rows Of reddish herbage that bristles and slants Its square shadows. The pink young houses show one side bright Flatly assuming the sun, And one side shadow, half in sight, Half-hiding the pavement-run; Where hastening creatures pass intent On their level way, Threading like ants that can never relent And have nothing to say. Bare stems of street-lamps stiffly stand At random, desolate twigs, To testify to a blight on the land That has stripped their sprigs. 

  

  

       THIEF IN THE NIGHT     

 LAST night a thief came to me And struck at me with something dark. I cried, but no one could hear me, I lay dumb and stark. When I awoke this morning I could find no trace; Perhaps 'twas a dream of warning, For I've lost my peace. 

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