(in memoriam Dorothy Wellesley, 1889-1956)
By night and sea the windstorm came,
to shake the hedges and the nests,
to wreck the orchard as it came,
its whistle, scandal, thoughtlessness.
The morning light was marine and new,
a shimmer and ache which, edging near
to beauty, showed closed gardens opening anew
where fallen branches gouged the hedges clear.
For acres round the prancing wind
had breezed and blown and beaten down
each trellis, gate, and ladder. The wind-
slapped canvas scissored to snowflake on the ground.
A hawk sailed circles overhead,
disoriented by the landscape’s change:
a mad cook’s julliened cabbage head,
where orchard rows once neatly ranged.
A satyr’s marble hoof lay on the drive,
a rabbit hopped across a lawn of tiles.
And snatched from its roof by the sea-wind’s drive,
a neighbor’s weathervane, flung for miles.