Yesterday evening
I returned with the clouds
drifting under the rosebushes
(great, round tenderness)
among the faithful tree trunks.
The solitude was eternal
and the silence never-ending.
I stood still like a tree
and listened to trees talking.
From "Men Trees" in Three Hundred Poems, 1903-1953, by Juan Ramon Jimenez (Austin:
University of Texas Press, n.d.), p. 201
