The greens of the Ganges delta

Dream Song 27: The greens of the Ganges delta foliate

The greens of the Ganges delta foliate.
Of heartless youth made late aware he pled:
Brownies, please come.
To Henry in his sparest times sometimes
the little people spread, & did friendly things;
then he was glad.

Pleased, at the worst, except with man, he shook
the brightest winter sun.
All the green lives
of the great delta, hours, hurt his migrant heart
in a safety of the steady ‘plane. Please, please come.

My friends, – he has been known to mourn, – I’ll die;
live you, in the most wild, kindly, green
partly forgiving wood,
sort of forever and all those human sings
close not your better ears to, while good Spring
returns with a dance and a sigh.

from Collected Poems: 1937-1971 (Faber, 1990), copyright © 1989 by Kate Donahue Berryman, by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. Recording used by permission of the BBC.

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