Wild Strawberries Poem by Nero CaroZiv

It is that time of my life when in me I sadly behold
Around me merely few yellow leaves, or none do still at late autumn hang
Upon those boughs which like my rusted bones and brittle wrinkled skin shake against the cold,
Bare ruined waning choirs, who were late to migrate, the sweet birds their melodies sang.

In me, myself I seethe twilight of such life, such a gloom of a dusk in abating day
As after sunset fades in the fire gored sinking west,
Which by, and by black night does take away, our soul, hopes and pray
Death's second self, that seals up all of us in eternal unknown rest.

Within my thoughts I see the glowing from ashes of such fire
That on the ashes of its own youth it does lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.


My mirror a window within; shall not persuade me any more; I am old
As it used to be when youth and my love were of one package, solid date;
But when in her the cruel time's furrows extending over her brow I behold,
Then I know that angel of death would my days in haste expiate.

For all that beauty that does bloom and cover her
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in her breast does throb and live, as does hers in me
How can I then be elder than her?

O therefore, my love, be of herself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for her benefits and will,
Bearing her heart, which I will keep so chary
Up to my grave; more than a tender nurse her babe from faring ill


My creeping, crabbing Age and my far sailing Youth
Are antagonists to each other, like two foes beyond any measure
My sweet far Youth was full of excitements and days of pleasure,
My Age is now a well of anguish, worries, a fountain of care and unpleasant truth;

Youth has the freshness of summer morning; the air full of scent of spring
My Age now is like winter weather; burden of knots and heavy things
In my Youth the whole world was like summer, brave and dare,
My Age now is like winter bare and tare


My child days haunt me; I remember Sonia, a child that was smiling at me pleasantly
I was plainly grateful for her eyes' courtesy
Observing, she lowered her eyes and hushed
And like a fresh young budding rose bush she all over blushed

kindergarten days were long and calm
The air was sweet and quite holly like a nun; no alarm
Sonia was there, indeed a fine and comely girl with fair hair neatly combed
With sharp fierce dark blue eyes beneath locks of plenty hair; the plain yard she roamed


Every morning I by the kindergarten gate stood long alone
Though it was early morning my soul like the earth after the sun had gone
Grew slowly cool and took a darker hue
Until her mother brought her to school, then my soul revived and new comfort drew

So many graces in that girl I had found
With such my child imagination had decked her round
I was enthralled to her smooth skin and pretty face
Her slender body as she played with toys; a heavenly creature in grace

Those tender lovely cheeks, that blushing liveliness
Limed an excessive infant happiness
A small child her mind and her heart had no exercise
So rustic and common to the teacher were her replies


Spring time; when taken one day to the field, a dandelion I had found
That tempted my hand with light and white feathery round
I was longing to finger it; I tiptoed near
And blew on it my full mouth air until all plumelets did disappear

And all that in my hand was left of them
Was but the naked hairy shaft of a green stem
Sonia was watching amid the emerald grass; on her red kind shawl
She laughed and in her coral mantle wrap withal

That set off her blond hair and her tiny black shoe
At either end, while in between the two
Her white skirt in spring summer mid day gleamed
She like a gaudy caterpillar seemed

The one that creeps along green twigs and leaves of the plane
The picture of her graces and charms in my mind never in false or vain
Oh lord! Was there any detail I didn't observe on her beauty?
Did I see anything I did not desire urgently as heavenly duty?


My days of youth haunt me like a shadow, they were faster than fairies, faster than ghosts and witches,
The scenery of ravines and houses, the glimpse of green hedges and brimmed rain ditches;
And I was charging the winds along fields and meadows, waving my lance like troops in a battle
All through the wide moor, rich with lush grass for horses and for cattle:


All of the sights of my heart for the beloved thorny hills and the plain
Sweet painful memories that now fly as thick and clear yet offer no gain
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
The small painted school, two beloved huts, kiosks along the road, fresh gardens and citrus orchards whistling by.


Here am I, an aloof child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself in mid summer day, gathering brambles;
Here is a curious cow who stands and at me it gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies in summer days

Here is the horse with a cart trotting and dusting the unpaved stony road
Lumping along with dark patina faced man and with full hay load;
And here is a bakery in the shade of palm, and there is a small shy ravine
Each a painful glimpse, each a precious picture that appears, flickers and gone forever!


The days my face was in Clara's eye, and hers in mine did appear,
Our child true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where could I had found two better small innocent hemisphere,
Until her mom came to pick her up; the sun declined in the West

I went home such a happy child for our two loves was one;
Love so alike and pure that for ever lasts and will never be done
To see her every hour; to sit and draw her arched brows
Her hawking eyes, her abundant curls more than cluster of wheat in the meadows



The clear beautiful nights of summer
A wind blew out a floating cloud, gently with no hammer
For then the moon never beams to me without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful gentle Clara

And the stars ever rise from my window bed
As I feel the bright black eyes of the beautiful modest Clara silhouette
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down as by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my dream bride



The days of childhood were long lazy and calm
The sun was shining bright, and birds shimmering without alarm
My eyes and heart were in conflict; a long propagated war
My eyes were in constant effort to drop her image from my heart; put a bar,

While my heart longed for Sonia andthe conquest of her sight;
My heart and myeyes both struggle for the freedom of that right.
The plain around the kindergarten was grassy, wild and bare
Wide vast meadow with wild roses which was open to the spring air

Wild wreaths entangled stretched to build up everywhere
My heart pleaded that Sonia picture within me ever did lie
A closet never pierced with unwelcome crystal eyes
But my eyes the defendant did that plea deny

And argued with me that Clara fair appearance within me lies.
I met Sonia and Clara later years when they had grown up
Their beauty was rare and total at any scale top
And by that sum all women are diminished


These walking beauties overshadowed any feminine stature
Two magnets of men, had they not plundered woman's head of all its graces
Flaunting them as her adornments in men faces
Their smile, their style, their laugh, even their fret


Regard them as they walked two beauties in elegance
I listen to them as they talked, such a sophisticated wisdom; total trance
Their look when they rebuked they drew all the attention
Was an expression of a fashion?

I could only fancy, or dream their face as they sleep
Ever such budding two pair's eyes have been seen
And Clara inherited with her blood
Though in perverted ways, a burning zeal

For law, nature and God in her demeanor and mood
Transferred what was perverse to the ideal; Sonia! Was ice as she was fire
You hate her and you love her
And if you wonder how can you do both

I cannot say, but I can feel it as it shivers me
Being torn and tortured between the two
Sonia was a person you can never stop loving or adore
You can only hate her, and abhor her more



The glad summer days, full with happy and pleasant ways
For the wild fields and the and the trees of different hues in the wildwood
The scents, the sights, and the dear mischievous delights
For my innocent carefree childhood

Heavy was the air with a fragrance rare,
Strawberries ripe in the vast meadow,
Luscious and red where the vines were spread
Thickly in summer sun and in a dusk shadow

The glad summer days full with game and play
Chorus of wild birds was to me calling
'Strawberry ripe strawberry ripe; to every child rolling in hay'
From gored dawn till the night dew was falling.



Flowing like a river to the wild strawberries fields
My heart was like a vivid singing bird of fun and glee
Whose nest is over a river marsh with balmy flowers yields
My heart was like a sweetapple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset red fruit;
My heart was like a rainbow shell with rain ringing with a thousands bells
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart was gladder than all these

Because I was a flower; a tree; the whole of nature becameme.
Childhood contemplation of introvert soul; there was an enormous pleasure
In the pathless orchards and the gloom of woods beyond any possible measure
Around the kindergarten; the citrus trees were in arapture of fragrant scent

I loved the isolation of those days in my wandering in fields and wild meadow
There society, harsh rebuking adults where none intruded
By the deep ripe field of wheat, and music in its whisper to the wind
I grew not to love man; but Nature, air and trees and meadows more and more,

From these scenes my courage grew, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, the precious world of all and feel
What I can never express, yet cannot all conceal



I visited my hometown, I ran through all the house to find at last
The room in which my precious days of childhood had passed
I entered and drew back, I was surprised to see
How different it was, much smaller, much older, charmless whose it could be?

It was with careless confusion, uninviting disarray
What hand could have left the room that way
It used to have a wide windowwherefragrant flowers were set
Geranium, gillyflower and the shy violet

To the window I went again to look
And saw where sharp blades reeds once grew by the book
My memories traveled to the kindergarten window where I stood astaire
As a child I was mused, and breathed the spring flower scented air

I bent down to reach the violets, and then
My curious glance passed over where the kids were playing again
Beneath the window tiny footprints strayed
I was trying to guess by whom they had been made

I was looking up and suddenly caught the sight
There was Clara upon the fence in dress white
A piece of beauty her slender form enclosed
Her shoulders and her swan like neck exposed

Her hair was not in tresses unconfined
But into little paper pods was twined
That view so wonderfully graced her, and the sunlight shed
A radiance like heavenly halo round her head

Her face was turned from me; half way concealed
As if she was looking for someone on the kindergarten field
I looked at her startled her beauty and grace, yet she was no longer there
And so I was confused and perplexed; with heart beating throbbing stronger

I left the window at my house contemplating at that event
How it brought upon me joy, child glee and day long merriment
I was marveling how mother Nature could ever find room
For so many strips of beauty; strange intriguing contrasts in one human bloom



Oh Clara dear who would bring you back here, that you were here
With your brown eyes, that I could never take mine from yours, so bright and clear.
And your sweet voice, such a pleasant reminiscence was like a bird
Singing love to its lone love mate

In the ivy bower disconsolate;
Your voice was the sweetest ever heard
And your brow so broad and bright
Clara dear who would pluck back these days of fun and youth for me soon

I am sick; I am not well when you are far;
As the earth after the sun goes down, as sunset to the shepherd moon,
As twilight to the western star,
You, beloved, are to me.



In the days of wild youth; pangs and rapture there was Rachael
A lovely maid that swept my world; shook my being so profound well
She came to the class of theoretical physics
And sat by a tall white pillar; never unaccompanied; never alone

An angel watching the board of elongated equations with no lyrics
I sat few rows behind her carved with stone
And once, but once she turned lifting her eyes
And suddenly, sweetly, strangely blushed

To find they were met by my bewildered own
And suddenly, sweetly strangely my heart beat stronger
My blood throbbed thicker until I heard no longer
The professor Thermodynamic transformations laws

I was long gone under a pensive dream, an utterly estranged show
The college bell's ring pealed up the vaulted hall
What untimely abrupt call
I stood up on my feet stunned like a child

Would she remember it, the passionate dual of our eyes' meet
Ah well, very well, I might have been beguiled
By some coquettish deceit
Yet if she were not a cheat

If she were all that she seemed
And her smile had all that I dreamed
Then the world were not so shakily bitter
And her gracious smile would have sunken on me so much sweeter


What vile winds had scudded away the war
Of roses and daisies at her garden door
As she fled fast through sun and shade
The happy pine trees winds upon her played

Blowing the ringlet from the braid
She looked so lovely as she swayed
I stood watching her a man in his pride
Or a puppet on a string

The rein with dainty finger-tips
A man who would give all other bliss
And all his worldly worthy for this
To waste his whole heart in one kiss, upon her perfect voluptuous lips


And now at the autumn of my life
When struggle calms; fading is the meaning of strife
When I have ceased to lift sinews and flap wings
Over the faultiness of the world and the annoying things,

And learned to accept that compromises wait
Behind each stern and hardly opened gate,
When I have looked the world around in the eyes,
Grown tranquil and very maturely wise,

Life have given me the whole beauty and its truth,
And taken in exchange my precious youth.



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