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April is National Poetry Month! Edna St. Vincent Millay: "The Plum-Gatherer"
Millay, Millay!
The Plum-Gatherer
The angry nettle and the mild
Grew together under the blue-plum trees.
I could not tell as a child
Which was my friend of these.
Always the angry nettle in the skirt of his sister
Caught my wrist that reached over the ground,
Where alike I gathered,--for the one was sweet and the other wore a frosty dust--
The broken plum and the sound.
The plum-trees are barren now and the black knot is upon them,
That stood so white in the spring.
I would give, to recall the sweetness and the frost of the lost blue plums
Anything, anything.
I thrust my arm among the grey ambiguous nettles, and wait.
But they do not sting.
The Plum-Gatherer
The angry nettle and the mild
Grew together under the blue-plum trees.
I could not tell as a child
Which was my friend of these.
Always the angry nettle in the skirt of his sister
Caught my wrist that reached over the ground,
Where alike I gathered,--for the one was sweet and the other wore a frosty dust--
The broken plum and the sound.
The plum-trees are barren now and the black knot is upon them,
That stood so white in the spring.
I would give, to recall the sweetness and the frost of the lost blue plums
Anything, anything.
I thrust my arm among the grey ambiguous nettles, and wait.
But they do not sting.