Reprinted with permission from "The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence," Viking Penguin Books.

When the ripe fruit falls

its sweetness distills and trickles away

into the veins of the earth.

When fulfilled people die

the essential oil of their experience enters

the veins of living space, and adds a glisten

to the atom, to the body of immortal chaos.

For space is alive

and it stirs like a swan

whose feathers glisten

silky with the oil of distilled experience.