The Poplars by Bocage's School

Two black poplars of twenty-five metres stand beside the Escola Secundaria du Bocage, which is named for Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage, the poet born in this city in 1765. Bocage is the reason Setubal has a literary reputation at all. He ran away to sea, deserted, wrote satirical verse sharp enough to get himself arrested by the Inquisition in 1797, and produced sonnets that Portuguese schoolchildren still learn; the school that carries his name has stood here since the trees were young. Black poplar is a riverside species and it behaves like one: fast, tall, thirsty, and among the first trees to break bud in spring and among the last to hold its leaves in autumn. It also moves. The leaves are set on flattened stalks that twist in the smallest breeze, so a poplar makes noise where other trees are silent, which is why they were planted along roads and rivers across Europe. Stand under these two on a windy afternoon and the sound is the point.