We climbed that hill,
We climbed that hill,
The road flushed red in pride
At being beauty's boundary. Either side
Stretched beauty, beauty ever, beauty still.
For on the left
Rose sandhills bound together by the deft
Long fingers of sea-grass,
Humped like the Punch and Judy of a farce,
Comical, cleft
With gaps for wind to pass,
Spotted
With dark
Clumped tea-tree, stark
With rushes, fierce with burrs,
Blotted
With purple earth,
Stains, remnants, marks of birth
On too-exuberant beauty.
On the right
Long paddocks stooped under a cloudy sky.
'They're lovely paddocks. Look at them,' you said.
I turned my head.
What I'd thought gray
Was seen
To be the young beginning of live green
Under a spray
Of ghostly weed-stalks—lilacs, mauves and blues
At interplay—
A delicate tracery of shadow hues.
'There's colour,' I began
And straightway knew
I saw what you
Saw not, and yet your vision was not mine.
Your eyes were on the line
The sweep and curve of the fields against the sky.
You'd heard
My poor beginning of a word.
I had no more to praise
An unfamiliar loveliness. To gaze
Was all my praise.
At the hilltop it was your turn to say
'There's colour.' You had found
Silver and gold on my Tom Tiddler's ground.
At the roadside
A clump of grasses, all
Caught round a little bush and tangled, tied
With unimagined colours people call
Green when they see them. This was treasure spied
By your eyes with my soul.
You'd liked the whole
[...] Read more
poem by Lesbia Harford
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