You've dwindled to a quiet word like this:      "You are unfilial." Which means at last That I have conquered you, at least it means That you could not devour me. Yet am I blind to you? Let me confess You are the world's whole cycle in yourself:      You can be summer rich and luminous; You can be autumn, mellow, mystical; You can be winter with a cheerful hearth; You can be March, bitter, bright and hard, Pouring sharp sleet, and showering cutting hail; You can be April of the flying cloud, And intermittent sun and musical air. I am not you while being you, While finding in myself so much of you. It tears my other self, which is not you. My tragedy is this: I do not love you. Your tragedy is this: my other self Which triumphs over you, you hate at heart. Your solace is you have no faith in me. All quiet now, no March days with you now, Only the soft coals slumbering in your face, I saw you totter over a ravine! Your eyes averted, watching steps, A light of resignation on your brow. Your thin-spun hair all gray, blown by the wind Which swayed the blossomed cherry trees, Bent last year's reeds, Shook early dandelions, and tossed a bird That left a branch with song—      I saw you totter over a ravine! What were you at the start? What soul dissatisfaction, sense of wrong, Of being thwarted, stung you? What was your shrinking of the flesh; What fear of being soiled, misunderstood, What wrath for loneliness which constant hope Saw turned to fine companionship; What in your marriage, what in seeing me, The fruit of marriage, recreated traits Of face or spirit which you loathed; What in your father and your mother, And in the chromosomes from which you grew, By what mitosis could result at last In you, in issues of such moment, In our dissevered beings, In what the world will take from me In children, in events? All quiet now, no March days with you now, Only the soft coals slumbering in your face, I saw you totter over a ravine, And back of you the Furies! 

  

  

       JOHNNY APPLESEED     

      When the air of October is sweet and cold as the wine of apples Hanging ungathered in frosted orchards along the Grand River, I take the road that winds by the resting fields and wander From Eastmanville to Nunica down to the Villa Crossing. I look for old men to talk with, men as old as the orchards, Men to 

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