Amy Lowell

From “Southern April”

Charleston, S. C.

IT was a disappointment,

For I do not like magenta,

And the garden was a fire of magenta

Exploding like a bomb into the light-colored peace of a spring afternoon.

Not wistaria dropping through Spanish moss,

Not cherokees sprinkling the tops of trees with moon-shaped stars,

Not the little pricked-out blooms of banksia roses,

Could quench the flare of raw magenta.

Rubens women shaking the fatness of their bodies

In an opulent egotism

Till the curves and colors of flesh

Are nauseous to the sight,

So this magenta.

Hateful,

Reeking with sensuality,

Bestial, obscene—

I remember you as something to be forgotten.

But I cherish the smooth sweep of the colorless river,

And the thin, clear song of the red-winged blackbirds

In the marsh-grasses on the opposite bank.