Selected Poems (Aiken)/Dead Leaf in May

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DEAD LEAF IN MAY
One skeleton-leaf, white-ribbed, a last year's leaf,Skipped in a paltry gust, whizzed from the dust,Leapt the small dusty puddle; and sailing thenMerrily in the sunlight, lodged itselfBetween two blossoms in a hawthorn tree.That was the moment: and the world was changed.With that insane gay skeleton of a leafA world of dead worlds flew to hawthorn trees,Lodged in the green forks, rattled, rattled their ribs(As loudly as a dead leaf's ribs can rattle)Blithely, among bees and blossoms. I cursed,I shook my stick, dislodged it. To what end?Its ribs, and all the ribs of all dead worlds,Would house them now forever as death should:Cheek by jowl with May.
That was the moment: and my brain flew openLike a ripe bursting pod. The seed sprang out,And I was withered, and had given all.Ripeness at top means rottenness beneath:The brain divulging seed, the heart is empty:The little blood goes through it like quicksilver:The hand is leather, and the world is lost.
Human, who trudge the road from Here to There:Lock the dry oak-leaf's flimsy skeleton ​In auricle or ventricle; sail itLike a gay ship down red Aorta's flood.Be the paired blossoms with dead ribs between.Thirst in the There, that you may drink the Here.

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