Albert Edmund Trombly - 5 Short Poems (1916-1922)

Forgotten Poems #118 || Reissue #22

    
              —: The Trees :—

                 I
 
       Through the afternoon the breeze
       Looses leafy tongues of trees.
 
       Nodding heads accentuate
       What the leaves articulate.
 
       Twilight comes; the windless air
       Stills the gossip stirring there.
 
       In the night perhaps they sleep;
       But the roots of trees lie deep.
 
                  II
 
       Poets sing their shade and fruits
       Never guessing at their roots.
 
       Still, they too have timid souls
       Underneath their rugged boles,
 
       Masters of an occult land
       We could better understand.
 
       Poets would be more profound
       If their roots took underground.
    

        
              —: April :—

       The blossoms of the cherry fall
       And flutter to the garden-wall;
       The frogs in unison blow and blow
       The shrill notes of a piccolo;
       The moon in the pool to the moon in the sky
       Trembles and looks up wistfully.
    

    
	       —: The Chickadee :—

       Sing, little fellow, 
       Chick-a-dee-dee!
       Birches are yellow
       Sing, little fellow!
       Sing us thy mellow, 
       Gay-hearted glee;
       Sing, little fellow, 
       Chick-a-dee-dee!
    

    
              —: Vignette :—

       April, you come
       Laughing at them who sorrow and fret,
       Smelling of lilac and violet.
    

    
              —: Had I Been Monk :—

       Had I been monk and you a nun,
       Under a thirteenth century sun,
       Although your convent had been far
       From mine, as convents sometimes are,
       I would have known that you were there,
       And you of me had been aware;
       And I'd have stolen out at night,
       When the holy monks and nuns recite
       Their beads, and gone with a hot foot-fall
       Up to your convent and scaled the wall,
       And panting crept to your very cell,
       And wooed you with the fire of hell!
    

Albert Edmund Trombly was; “Born in Chazy, New York. Five years later his family removed to Worcester, Massachusetts, and there was educated. He was graduated from the Worcester State Normal School in 1910. In 1913 he took his A.B. at Harvard , and since then has been instructor of Romance languages in the University of Pennsylvania. At the latter university he received an M.A. degree in 1915.” (The Newark Anniversary Poems, 1917) “On the faculty of the University of Texas, and has written a monograph on Rossetti.” (The Poet's Pack, 1921) In the 1920s, “a professor of Romance languages at the University of Missouri.” (Southwest Review, 1925)

    
              —: Fragments for Albert Trobly :—
                               By Dick Whyte

       Poems are trees
       if you please

       Words are sticks
       broken in bits

       Put back together
       letter by letter

       Printed on leaves
       of papery bees

       Poems are trees
       if you please
    

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