Marsden Hartley

From “Sunlight Persuasions”

YOU, yellow climber,

You, whom I have the honor to address

Amorously, at the high noon of my morning.

The Sunday of a new caress is over me.

Just there, a little to the left of your cheek—

Sitting upon the needlepoint

Of an unfeathered plum-tree—

So high it is where he sits

The hills graze his eyelids and his mouth—

A mockingbird, amorously inveigling.

If you think he is mocking you, yellow one,

Do not trouble.

He is nevertheless

Singing.

With fan-shaped petals of cerise

The ground is covered this morning.

The ladies must have dropped

Their modesties here, last night—

In passing.

It is of them too the mockingbird sings,

Toward the morning.