Grasse: The Olive Trees

for Marcelle and Ferdinand SpringerHere luxury’s the common lot. The lightLies on the rain-pocked rocks like yellow woolAnd around the rocks the soil is rusty brightFrom too much wealth of water, so that the grassMashes under the foot, and all is fullOf heat and juice and a heavy jammed excess.

Whatever moves moves with the slow completeGestures of statuary. Flower smellsAre set in the golden day, and shelled in heat,Pine and columnar cypress stand. The palmSinks its combs in the sky. The whole South swellsTo a soft rigor, a rich and crowded calm.

Only the olive contradicts. My eye,Traveling slopes of rust and green, arrestsAnd rests from plenitude where olives lieLike clouds of doubt against the earth’s array.Their faint disheveled foliage divestsThe sunlight of its color and its sway.

Not that the olive spurns the sun; its leavesScatter and point to every part of the sky,Like famished fingers waving. Brilliance weavesAnd sombers down among them, and amongThe anxious silver branches, down to the dryAnd twisted trunk, by rooted hunger wrung.

Even when seen from near, the olive showsA hue of far away. Perhaps for thisThe dove brought olive back, a tree which growsUnearthly pale, which ever dims and dries,And whose great thirst, exceeding all excess,Teaches the South it is not paradise.

Richard Wilbur, “Grasse: The Olive Trees” from Collected Poems 1943-2004.