The Captain’s Walk in Summer

Come now, we’ll have none of that:
It’s too hot, and the birds are open-mouthed
and panting with effort
With every hop, and every song.

Let’s have no more memories
     of where we used to live;
Let’s not recall the elms and oaks,
     the poplars and weeping willows,
All groaning in a hot August wind.
No more memories of a town
     where all the houses are like ours,
All built like graceful sailing ships
     moored along shady avenues.

Here the crows are panting, and so are the sparrows and chickadees.
Those swallows, and that warbler, too.
Let’s not recall her, in her soft summer dress,
flapping her skirts to make a breeze
And tacking along the avenue
With her broad straw hat for a sail.
We never could approach her as she pranced about in frocks,
the birds and I,
Too busy with the work of hop and song.

But what else can I sing for, this overheated summer?
We’re better off with none of that: the gazing back
     to shady avenues
Where old voices talked up decent work,
     where she skipped past all the murmurs;
Where the houses all had captain’s walks,
     ironwork older than the wars.

Some took to calling it a widow’s walk
after all the years of waiting,
As she paced the roof and searched the empty distances
Where every captain disappears.

Now, what a strange house this is. I remember
it was different, then:
There were weasels in the attic, birds
under the eaves,
A scraping and a singing nature up above,
And damp below, where the coal scuttle let the water in.
Summer never was the tearful season.
We had none of that, then.

She danced between the groaning elms and oaks,
the poplars, and the weeping willows.
She smiled at all the murmurs on the porch,
At all old voices, and ran back up the steps
to eat ice-cream and chocolates, to take up reading in the shade.

So I won’t encourage the night-thinking, with the crows
     ready to mass in a murder on the roof:
No, we’ll have none of that.
Keep the mouth open, and spread the wings a little.
Move a bit more into the shade. Recall
     that evening on the captain’s walk in summer,
Where she sat in her soft dress,
And drank a glass of wine, and didn’t spend the time
     looking for anyone.
There were no hops and songs,
     no murmurs, and no groans.
She had none of that, up there,
     where the evening breezes loosed her hair and cooled us.

She would close the book, and smile,
brush away a dewdrop from her cheek,
And put the book aside with a kind word.

We’ve had done with that, this overheated summer:
     it’s too late for all that now.
No more evening books to read, and the captain’s walk
     gave up its iron to the nation long ago.
The houses slipped their moorings, and her face is like a shadow
In the elms and oaks, the poplars, and the weeping willows.
We’ll have no more of that, the birds and I, as we slip into
     another breathless evening where
There’s nothing left for us but widow’s walks and panting
     with every hop, and every song.