The Orange Tree

The young girl stood beside me.     
I Saw not what her young eyes could see:
- A light, she said, not of the sky
  Lives somewhere in the Orange Tree.

- Is it, I said, of east or west?
  The heartbeat of a luminous boy
Who with his faltering flute confessed
  Only the edges of his joy?

Was he, I said, borne to the blue
  In a mad escapade of Spring
Ere he could make a fond adieu
  To his love in the blossoming?

- Listen! the young girl said.  There calls
  No voice, no music beats on me;
But it is almost sound: it falls
 This evening on the Orange Tree.

- Does he, I said, so fear the Spring
  Ere the white sap too far can climb?
See in the full gold evening
  All happenings of the olden time?

Is he so goaded by the green?
  Does the compulsion of the dew
Make him unknowable but keen
  Asking with beauty of the blue?

- Listen! the young girl said.  For all
  Your hapless talk you fail to see
There is a light, a step, a call
  This evening on the Orange Tree.

- Is it, 1 said, a waste of love
 Imperishably old in pain,
Moving as an affrighted dove
 Under the sunlight or the rain?

Is it a fluttering heart that gave
 Too willingly and was reviled?
Is it the stammering at a grave,
 The last word of a little child?

- Silence! the young girl said.  Oh, why,
 Why will you talk to weary me?
Plague me no longer now, for I
 Am listening like the Orange Tree.