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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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