SPRINGTIME

And when I love thee not …

Now that March has come, and frail snowdrops
Have pushed safely through the heavy earth
And crimson crocuses flower brightly below
The grey boughs of budding beaches
And yellow catkins hang down from the hazel
And wrens and robins whirr and chirrup
In tumbled brambles and tangled hedges;
Since short showers urge on the earth’s activity,
And sometimes a cloudless sun warms through
The flesh into the bone, because the spring has come
Hopes of a violent winter have left me now.

A hard and bitter winter is what I wanted.
But there was none. There was no fierce frost
To burn out the disease from dying elms,
No thick and silent snow to suffocate
The passionate earth, no violent wind
To break off dead branches, to cleanse
November trees of all their withered leaves.
The autumn spread throughout the winter
Into the spring, leaving last year still here,
The rotten apple uneaten in the lank grass,
And limp upon the branch bursting with buds
Dead leaves fluttering in every breeze.
So year accretes on year, debris on debris,
And dead forms, parted from their living passion
Are mocked by the strong sap in the lovely leaf.

O that some absolute, utter, purifying winter
Had purged me of all memory, all passion
And all knowledge of last year’s life.
For feelings rise now that have no form
Memories of a lost spring spent together –
A spring without summer, bright wild winds,
Glorious moments in a growing world, unfollowed
By a deep, calm, luxuriant warmth,
A brief spring that withered back into the world
Under the earth, where there is darkness only
Where again I am,
                                in March again, in springtime,
Forced to look upon the snowdrops and the crocuses
Daffodils and foxgloves, forced to listen to
The soft call of the ring-dove, the chattering thrush,
And must smell the rich, deep scent of blossom.
All are painful. All mock. Dislocated from the season
I long for a violent winter.