Fruit-Gathering

(1916)

I

Bid me and I shall gather my fruits to bring them in full baskets
into your courtyard, though some are lost and some not ripe.

For the season grows heavy with its fulness, and there is a
plaintive shepherd's pipe in the shade.

Bid me and I shall set sail on the river.

The March wind is fretful, fretting the languid waves into
murmurs.

The garden has yielded its all, and in the weary hour of evening
the call comes from your house on the shore in the sunset.

II

My life when young was like a flower--a flower that loosens a
petal or two from her abundance and never feels the loss when the
spring breeze comes to beg at her door.

Now at the end of youth my life is like a fruit, having nothing
to spare, and waiting to offer herself completely with her full
burden of sweetness.

III

Is summer's festival only for fresh blossoms and not also for
withered leaves and faded flowers?

Is the song of the sea in tune only with the rising waves?

Does it not also sing with the waves that fall?

Jewels are woven into the carpet where stands my king, but there
are patient clods waiting to be touched by his feet.

Few are the wise and the great who sit by my Master, but he has
taken the foolish in his arms and made me his servant for ever.

IV

I woke and found his letter with the morning.

I do not know what it says, for I cannot read.

I shall leave the wise man alone with his books, I shall not
trouble him, for who knows if he can read what the letter says.

Let me hold it to my forehead and press it to my heart.

When the night grows still and stars come out one by one I will
spread it on my lap and stay silent.

The rustling leaves will read it aloud to me, the rushing stream
will chant it, and the seven wise stars will sing it to me from
the sky.

I cannot find what I seek, I cannot understand what I would
learn; but this unread letter has lightened my burdens and turned
my thoughts into songs.

V

A handful of dust could hide your signal when I did not know its
meaning.

Now that I am wiser I read it in all that hid it before.

It is painted in petals of flowers; waves flash it from their
foam; hills hold it high on their summits.

I had my face turned from you, therefore I read the letters awry
and knew not their meaning.

VI

Where roads are made I lose my way.

In the wide water, in the blue sky there is no line of a track.

The pathway is hidden by the birds' wings, by the star-fires, by
the flowers of the wayfaring seasons.

And I ask my heart if its blood carries the wisdom of the