Léonie Adams

'Country Summer':

Now the rich cherry, whose sleek wood,  

And top with silver petals traced  

Like a strict box its gems encased,  

Has spilt from out that cunning lid,  

All in an innocent green round,  

Those melting rubies which it hid;  

With moss ripe-strawberry-encrusted,  

So birds get half, and minds lapse merry  

To taste that deep-red, lark’s-bite berry,  

And blackcap bloom is yellow-dusted. 

The wren that thieved it in the eaves  

A trailer of the rose could catch  

To her poor droopy sloven thatch, 

And side by side with the wren’s brood— 

O lovely time of beggar’s luck— 

Opens the quaint and hairy bud;  

And full and golden is the yield  

Of cows that never have to house,  

But all night nibble under boughs,  

Or cool their sides in the moist field. 

Into the rooms flow meadow airs, 

The warm farm baking smell’s blown round.  

Inside and out, and sky and ground  

Are much the same; the wishing star,  

Hesperus, kind and early born,  

Is risen only finger-far; 

All stars stand close in summer air, 

And tremble, and look mild as amber;  

When wicks are lighted in the chamber,  

They are like stars which settled there. 

Now straightening from the flowery hay,  

Down the still light the mowers look,  

Or turn, because their dreaming shook,  

And they waked half to other days,  

When left alone in the yellow stubble  

The rusty-coated mare would graze.  

Yet thick the lazy dreams are born,  

Another thought can come to mind,  

But like the shivering of the wind,  

Morning and evening in the corn.

Louise Glück

An interesting piece called 'Vespers [In your extended absence, you permit me]':

In your extended absence, you permit me 

use of earth, anticipating 

some return on investment. I must report 

failure in my assignment, principally 

regarding the tomato plants. 

I think I should not be encouraged to grow 

tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold 

the heavy rains, the cold nights that come 

so often here, while other regions get 

twelve weeks of summer. All this 

belongs to you: on the other hand, 

I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots 

like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart 

broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly 

multiplying in the rows. I doubt 

you have a heart, in our understanding of 

that term. You who do not discriminate 

between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence, 

immune to foreshadowing, you may not know 

how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf, 

the red leaves of the maple falling 

even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible 

for these vines.

Seamus Heaney

The summer classic 'Blackberry-Picking':

Late August, given heavy rain and sun 

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. 

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot 

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. 

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet 

Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it 

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for 

Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger 

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots 

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. 

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills 

We trekked and picked until the cans were full, 

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered 

With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned 

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered 

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. 

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. 

But when the bath was filled we found a fur, 

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. 

The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush 

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. 

I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair 

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. 

Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.