Nostos

There was an apple tree in the yard
this would have been forty years ago
behind, only meadows.

Drifts of crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April.
Spring flowers in the neighbor’s yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after?

Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth.

What do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from the tennis courts
Fields.

Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

by Louise Glück