Edward Sapir

From “Backwater”

LISTEN to my childish tale:

My heart was sad today;

My heart was so sad I could not find

Anything to say.

I walked out to the city’s edge

Where the streets all disappear,

And I thought the fields were sad with me—

Songless fields and drear.

I sat down under a maple tree

That rose up lone and bare;

Its dying-colored leaves were strewn

About me everywhere.

I sat and pondered aimlessly

Under the silent tree,

I pondered sadly under the boughs

That I thought were sad with me.

Then in a flash I felt a cool

And steely serenity

Descending from those silent boughs—

They were not sad with me.

And I felt the steely calm of their strength

Slip in my heart like a breath,

And I was like a wakened man

That had drowsed away in death.

I saw that steel was the maple-tree,

It had never been sad with me;

I saw that the blue of the sky was steel

In its cool serenity.

We were all steel out there in the field,

We three beyond the town—

We three that were strong over the leaves

Dying in red and brown.

Now you have heard my childish tale:

My heart was sad today

And it lost its sadness under a tree.

That is all I wanted to say.