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PN Review 275
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This poem is taken from PN Review 20, Volume 7 Number 6, July - August 1981.

Harvesting Alan Shapiro

We watched the lemons through the spring and summer,
small planets turning out of their green night
so slowly that we knew it would be winter
before we'd gather in that yellow light.

And, unaware, we shared as slow a ripening.
As quietly as lemons turning color,
our sweet days turned into remembering,
too swift a fragrance at the edge of anger.

And though it's winter and in the garden now
the lemons hang like worlds, forever day
for someone else, what weighed on other boughs
we harvest separately, and take away.

Moving Day

Moving the furniture-
last relics of what they
together had arranged-
...


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