Morris Bishop

From “With the A. E. F.”

HE was a wise old man, the color of earth;

From long upturning the earth his back was bent.

He told me how the wine was bad in the spring,

How the spring turned it moody and turbulent.

He tapped his earthy finger on the glass;

“The spring,” he said, “the spring runs into the soil,

And warms the vine, clipped to the very blood,

To bring forth buds with agony and toil.

“Not easily, as the profuse wild-vines do,

Only a few great buds on a quaking vine;

And in the caves the old wines suffer too,

And sour and turbulent is the spring-time wine.”

O horny old man, intimate with the earth,

Will you not tell me yet another thing?

What is the vine to which my hot blood yearns,

Bitter and turbulent, suffering with the spring?