The noisy city is blinding,
the glaring glass strikes me down deaf,
and through the deceptive, winding,
disgusting streets that I’m finding,
I feel the soot join with my breath.5
Ah, but just let my thoughts wander
to somewhere that’s peaceful and green.
Of that place I’ll sit and ponder:
before my youth I can squander,
I just want some time to be clean.10
Muses, lend me your skillful words,
Erato and Thalia both;
chirp in my ear like hummingbirds
but only when my speech is slurred.
Ideas my own are my oath.15
I’ll follow where the blackbird flies
past crumbling towers where upon
the carcass of industry lies,
and farther than the graying skies,
to a small pond with a toad and swan.
20
A woman walks along the shore
named Juniper, just like the tree
that grows beside her cottage door,
under she’d sit in years before
with the same flowers growing free.25
She stoops to pick a lily pale
that had been crushed beneath some boot,
brought it inside, while it was frail,
she let it stay in from the gale
to give it its own time to root.30
She doted upon that flower,
admired its beauty and charm.
The lily felt her love shower,
she checked on it every hour,
and made sure it came to no harm.35
When the lily started to yearn
for Zephyrus’ gentle spring winds,
its memory started to turn
away from the things it had spurned
to things that without it had thinned.40
Juniper took it to the grass,
softly calming its fear and pain.
It felt its blooms were made of glass
and worried the world would harass
another worthless freak so vain.45
She faltered a moment in fear,
for this pause the country girl saw,
she worried that if she drew near,
maybe nature really would jeer,
and the lily would full withdraw.50
And maybe the world wouldn’t hate,
but the lily’d still think it did.
Fear would fully take hold, and great
Anxiety would write its fate
back into the house where it hid.55
But to think that any world would
was not be a thought borne of sense.
Still even where Juniper stood,
the lily was unsure it could
become ever again this tense.60
And Juniper passed no judgment.
It’s no shame to go home and hide.
The lily could stay, lament,
until it was calm and content
and ready to go back outside.65
I don’t know what’s going to be
by that pond with the swan and frog.
I’ll learn when I’m finally free
and led there by swift Mercury,
but for now I’ll choke through the smog.70