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At the solstice hour
People dressed in wood
Lure into their leafage
Birds without faces.
The wandering stream
Drags towards the shores
Its memories of snow.
My sylvan trees
Have reddened with summer’s first day.
The men from the town
Said that was rust
Blown in from Japan.
But they don’t know
That the trees in this coomb
In their deepest secret roots
Stroke living stones
That start to dream
That the wind and the rain
Will take them naked on clay
At the solstice hour.