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Fifteen day from the coast
near to the source of four great rivers,
we found a land where men and women
bud and grow like leaves,
living but a single season.
Each branch a family, each tree
a city of multitudinous inhabitants,
crowded with whisper, murmur and chatter-
every leaf boasting individual features
like to ours, though (of necessity)
in low relief, such as Donatello
the Florentine would need all
his artistry to match.
Of a certainty, they had no souls
and what resistance could they offer
when a few strokes of an axe
might fell both city and citizens?
We plucked upwards of a thousand
carefully laying them in barrels
with salt between each layer
as one preserves fresh roses,
But being dead, if not yet brittle,
their features shrank to invisibility
So, for all our contrivance, we brought back
nothing but autumn and the colours of death.
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