Rats, the second link is wrong. It links to a totally different thread. I'm trying to find the right link.

Anyway, my quick version of the meaning is that the girl can see & hear something beyond the normal senses, or that she is extremely sensitive to the world around her and sees and hears something *indescribable* in the orange tree.

The man goes on and on trying to put words around the indescribable feeling, and therefore tries to pin down the experience and limit is to what he can understand. Is it this, is it that? He does not listen to the girl he just prattles with endless questions.

She finally stops listening to him and becomes like the orange tree, i.e. just "being" not over-intellectualising her self.

That's it in a nutshell, and it is only my opinion, but the funny thing is that I got mad in an English Lit tutorial at Uni when we were analysing the "c#%p" out of this poem and I unconsciously did what the girl was doing. I said why do we have to analyse poems and literature to death rather than just reading them and absorbing the total effect, the atmosphere, the feelings, the statements the poet/author is trying to make. As soon as I said that I realised that I had expressed what I really thought & felt about the poem.

I was reading Herrman Hesse novels around that time. It's not so much the plot in HH's novels but the world he creates and the total emptional, spiritual, psychological and intellectual atmosphere he creates.

Helen
Late for work again!