…this morning’s rain-related offering. It occurred to me that It would be quite easy, quite nice, and quite wonderful to make the final couplet:

Older she, than land they rest; her crops
Are they; if brick, or straw–so unrequited.

be a compressed version of the other three quatrains. So, as an example, quatrain three, (which also has been lucased: “seem to yearn,” rather than “likely yearn,” because it makes more sense to me, and I like the sound as well) shown here:

Pleasing, how again, she doth return
Such streets and buildings, parking lots and shops;
To older days, for which they seem to yearn,
So mixt with all her fallen tears united.

And it’s concluding couplet, so simple to change “they” to “we;” and better since it is “we” who live in cities (and in forests), and further “we”  refers to both of us–cities and forests–as a collection of similar things.  Also moving “we” to the third beat of line two, gives a six beat, or hexameter feel between the two rhymes which, to my ears, sounds more pleasing, as does “and” in the stead of “so” unrequited.

Older she, than land they wrest; her crops,
If brick or straw, are we–and unrequited.

(if reformatted, oddly reminiscent to Nightingale Woman, in a sense–not precisely in form, but in technique, in a sense)

Older she,
than land they wrest; her crops,
If brick or straw, are we–
and unrequited.

In addition, note the change “wrest” rather than “rest.” This creates a different impression when the poem is read with ones eyes rather than heard with ones ears. This notion that forests or cities are wrested from the land, or rather, that the land itself is wrested from whatever surrounding land.

On a final note:  “Brick or straw” is used for “us” (cities) and “us” (forests) because this work is peppered with familiar phrases, such as “held … sway” or “wrest [from the] land” an a few more, perhaps, that escape my memory, at present.