Dark on the gold west, <br />Mexico hung inscrutable like a curtain of heavy velvet <br />Before a lighted shrine. <br />Black on the west <br />All Mexico stood up from the Gulf, <br />Colossal, perpendicular, superb; <br />Mexico secretly veined with metals, <br />Mexico preoccupied with volcanoes, palm forests, <br />Deserts, cities, jungles, <br />Plantations of coffee and maguey, <br />Unknown valleys, hills of iron, <br />Orchids. <br />I heard the river flash down the canyon between the rosewoods, <br />And the scream of parrots going to roost above the water. <br />Through the tracery of bamboo plumes against the afterglow, <br />I saw mystery flicker along the sky-line <br />And vanish over Yucatan. <br />Exotic the thought of northern trees, <br />Oaks, maples, beeches, <br />Elms still unfledged in the early April. <br />For April here was wild white lilac, <br />Jargon of mocking-birds, <br />Air that glittered with the voice of a river, <br />Heaped shell-pink of rosewood blooms, <br />Bamboo feathers etched on the sunset, <br />And below the sunset, hanging hills like a weighted curtain of velvet <br />Before the shrine of an indifferent god.<br /><br />Grace Hazard Conkling<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/april-in-the-huasteca/
