(prose by Tennessee Williams)
How calmly does the [olive] branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer,
With no betrayal of despair.
Sometime while light obscures the tree
The zenith of its life will be
Gone past forever, and from thence,
A second history will commence.
A chronicle no longer gold,
A bargaining with mist and mould,
And finally the broken stem
The plummeting to earth; and then
An intercourse not well designed
For beings of a golden kind
Whose native green must arch above
The Earth's obscene, corrupting love.
And still the ripe fruit and the branch Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer
With no betrayal of despair.
O courage, could you not, as well
Select a second place to dwell,
Not only in that golden tree,
But in the frightened heart of me?