1 The Cherry Orchard

Not innocence; it was ignorance
lifted our chattering hoyden voices.
The orchard path, a shortcut to the village
where, when we got there, what was there to do?
—nothing to buy
but a handful of sticky sweets
our taste had outgrown.
Without mercy, without malice,
we tore off polished rubies, doubles and triples,
of garnet baubles from the bent branches
to adorn our ears, wreathe in our Alice headbands,
devour. We spat the pale stones 
from stained mouths, or from thumb and finger
flipped them to the treetops,
outscreaming the jays. We were indignant
when the farmer appeared
and raised his stick and shouted.
Our thieving troupe was beyond his reach.

2. Vineyards

Later, and older. Now we had suffered—a little.
When the way south became
a white road between fields of
fabled abundance, ranged in such weedless
elegance of order, we had no impulse, the two of us,
to trespass far into the serried vine;
but fruit nearest the verge we still thought
ours by right, to break our fast
as the dew vanished, the sun climbed. We slept
on bare ground, under stars, the nights of those days.

Not one by one but in passionate clusters
we pressed the grapes to our lips.
Their bloom was bloom,
the dust plain dust,
a time of happiness.
We had suffered
only a little, still,—our ignorance grown
only a little more shallow. There was something now
of innocence in us perhaps—we would not ask ourselves that
until we were almost old.