22
His sickness over, he was still abed.
He saw through the window when it was unfrosted,
clouds and a tree’s branch.
Birds crossed the sky,
or a sparrow hopped from twig to twig.
He watched, becoming quiet as the branch;
it seemed to him that his blood was cool as sap.
When he moved hands or body, he moved slowly,
the branch’s way at twilight.
His parents thought merely that he was still weak.

March he was well. Often when he came into his room,
he went to the window for a few minutes and stood watching the tree.
So he watched it bud and the little leaves and the leaves grown
       large and the leaves color and fall.

His parents had lost their money. They sold the house and were to move away.
He went up to his room for the last time.
The trunk of the tree, branches and twigs were still.
He thought, The tree is symmetrical…and whatever grows
       …in shape…and in change during the years. So is
       my life…and all lives.
He went down the stairs singing happily.
His father said, “There’s so much trouble—and he sings.”

23
At six o’clock it was pitch dark. It might have been after 
midnight in the city and no lamps lit along the streets.
He would have liked to hide in the city from the sky of stars.
Beside bushes and thin, leafless trees he walked upon the frozen clods and ruts.
There was no wind across the blackness of fields and lakes;
only the sound of his own feet knocking on the road.
There the stars were poured, and there scattered. He thought,
The symmetry in growth and life on earth, our sense of order,
        is not controlling in the universe.