Boyhood’s End

What, then, did I want? What did I ask to have?
If the question had been put to me then
And if I had been capable of expressing what was in me
I should have replied:
I want only to keep what I have
To rise each morning and look out on the sky
And the grassy dew-wet Earth
From day to day, from year to year
To watch each June and July for spring
To feel the same old sweet surprise and delight
At th'appearance of each familiar flower
Ev'ry new-born insect, ev'ry bird
Returned once more from the north
To listen in a trance of dеlight
To the wild notes of the goldеn plover
Coming once more to the great plain
Flying south, flock succeeding flock
The whole day long
Oh, those wild beautiful cries of the golden plover!
I could exclaim with Hafiz with but one word changed:
If after a thousand years
That sound should float o'er my tomb
My bones uprising in their gladness
Would dance in the sepulchre
To climb trees and put my hand down
In the deep hot nest of the Bienteveo
And feel the hot eggs
The five long-pointed cream coloured eggs
With choc'late spots and splashes at the larger end
To lie on a grassy bank, with the blue water
Between me and beds of tall bulrushes
List'ning to the mysterious sounds of the wind
And of hidden rails and coots and courlands
Conversing together in strange human-like tones;
To let my sight dwell and feast
On the camaloté flower
Amid its floating masses of moist vivid green leaves
The large almanda-like flower of a purest divine yellow
That, when plucked, leaves you with nothing
But a green stem in your hand. To ride at noon
On the hottest days when the whole Earth is a-glitter
With illusory water and see the cattle and horses
In thousands cov'ring the plain
At their watering places
To visit some haunt of large birds
At that still, hot hour
And see storks, ibises, grey herons
Egrets of a dazzling whiteness
And rose-coloured spoon-bills
And flamingoes standing in the shallow water
In which their motionless forms are reflected
To lie on my back on the rust-brown grass in January
To gaze up at the wide hot whity-blue sky
Peopled with millions and myriads of glist'ning balls
Of thistledown, ever floating by
To gaze and gaze, until they are to me living things
And I, in an ecstasy am with them
Floating in that immense shining void!