After Apple-picking
My long two-pointed ladder’s
sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel
that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be
two or three
Apples I didn’t pick
upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking
now.
Essence of winter sleep is
on the night,
The scent of apples:
I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness
from my sight
I got from looking through
a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from
the drinking trough
And held against the world
of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall
and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before
it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was
about to take.
Magnified apples appear and
disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet
showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps
the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a
ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as
the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the
cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples
coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am
overtired
Of the great harvest I myself
desired.
There were ten thousand thousand
fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down,
and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or
spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple
heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever
sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether
it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe
its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
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