Birds, Beasts and Flowers: Poems by David Herbert Lawrence

You tell me I am wrong.

Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong?

I am not wrong.

In Syracuse, rock left bare by the viciousness of Greek women,

No doubt you have forgotten the pomegranate-trees in flower,

Oh so red, and such a lot of them.

Whereas at Venice

Abhorrent, green, slippery city

Whose Doges were old, and had ancient eyes,

In the dense foliage of the inner garden

Pomegranates like bright green stone,

And barbed, barbed with a crown.

Oh, crown of spiked green metal

Actually growing!

Now in Tuscany,

Pomegranates to warm your hands at;

And crowns, kingly, generous, tilting crowns

Over the left eyebrow.

And, if you dare, the fissure!

Do you mean to tell me you will see no fissure?

Do you prefer to look on the plain side?

For all that, the setting suns are open.

The end cracks open with the beginning:

Rosy, tender, glittering within the fissure.

Do you mean to tell me there should be no fissure?

No glittering, compact drops of dawn?

Do you mean it is wrong, the gold-filmed skin, integument, shown ruptured?

For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken.

It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.

San Gervasio in Tuscany.