In a valley late bees with whining gold
Thread summer to the loose ends of sleep;
A harvester pauses, surprised, in dreams of sheep,
Across his back the ravellings of the sun.
No risk of incandescence begs his eyes
To the stubble horizon, nor ceremony
Of season slipping absently to fall;
Only the endless water in the run.
If always the torture of stillness suddenly
Argued so brisk and vain an agony,
One hid in winter could look back and say:
“Summer, you are the eucharist of death;
Partake of you and never again
Will midnight foot it steeply into dawn,
Dawn veer into day,
Nor the praised schism be of year split off year.
All time would be some tatters
On a figure, and the arrested sun—
Which are one.”