February

A chimney, breathing a little smoke.

The sun, I can't see

making a bit of pink

I can't quite see in the blue.

The pink of five tulips

at five p.m. on the day before March first.

The green of the tulip stems and leaves

like something I can't remember,

finding a jack-in-the-pulpit

a long time ago and far away.

Why it was December then

and the sun was on the sea

by the temples we'd gone to see.

One green wave moved in the violet sea

like the UN Building on big evenings,

green and wet

while the sky turns violet.

A few almond trees

had a few flowers, like a few snowflakes

out of the blue looking pink in the light.

A gray hush

in which the boxy trucks roll up Second Avenue

into the sky. They're just

going over the hill.

The green leaves of the tulips on my desk

like grass light on flesh,

and a green-copper steeple

and streaks of cloud beginning to glow.

I can't get over

how it all works in together

like a woman who just came to her window

and stands there filling it

jogging her baby in her arms.

She's so far off. Is it the light

that makes the baby pink?

I can see the little fists

and the rocking-horse motion of her breasts.

It's getting grayer and gold and chilly.

Two dog-size lions face each other

at the corners of a roof.

It's the yellow dust inside the tulips.

It's the shape of a tulip.

It's the water in the drinking glass the tulips are in.

It's a day like any other.

___________________

James Schuyler

Collected Poems

Farrar, Straus and Giroux