These Winds

They cannot tell me anything at all^___
These reminiscent winds^___as well as they
I know what twilit legends leaves recall
Fluttering down an unreturning way.
And far too well I know how silence aches
For lyric summers hushed to something less
Than any ghostly sigh . and how it breaks
The heart to recollect dead loveliness.
They need not bother to remind me of
Old grief blown down the centuries to strew
Their way^___spent, passion-colored words of love
Like leaves for frailty . . . I know that, too,^___
With all my summer shriveled to a husk,
And rain, like tears, staining the autumn dusk.

^__Margaret Perkins Briggs

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 25
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)