Letter from the Old World to a Brother in the New

The rain has stopped.
Someone is moving
sheep on the road, there are blue shadows stretched
like a hung wash on the mountains.
They shift with the clouds.

How is New York?
The shops and flats and people?

Sean is digging out the winter spinach.
I hear the scrape of spade on stones.
It is May, a wet Sunday in May—the air, greenish and moist.
The small, blue butterfly-irises float, the sweet rocket splays
its mauve fronds on the air.
                                             Yesterday
I placed its flowers in the dark-blue vase
and set them on that bookcase that we use
for gloves and keys and misplaced things—
I catch its perfume as I turn the stairs
and trail the sweetness with me down the hall.
I can smell
cattle on the wind now, a hot stench,
they bellow in the field behind the ash—

Sweet rocket, also called
dame's violet. Carried out of France
by fleeing Huguenots. Moist slips packaged up in moss.
What was most dear in time of flight.
Ah, but there's nothing in the world to match
this lush, damp garden in the damp, green light.
Very little is blossoming yet, it's all filling out and up.
The cow parsley's waist-high, the nettles rise. It may be
you are not a Huguenot.