Spring Has Stung!
 

May you greet it as you will.


Incoming!

Spring’s the most aggressive season
gagging us beyond all reason.
Sunshine’s closer and it warms us
but its power soon bombards us
with exploding spores and buds
nourished by old winter’s muds
raising sap in waking trees
teenaged kids above their knees,
and geezers fighting beyond reason
raise their lances one more season.

I got one, Ralph. Somebody needs to get this green ball rolling.

This is a bit stodgy and imitative, one of my way older poems. But what the hey, it's Spring & all -


A Light

Winter comes with tapered days
and wreathes in muffled whites and grays
all hint of color; the distressed
trees shiver now, like girls undressed.

The glass that hardens on the lake
looks almost deeper than the ache
in these two hands that hang like chains,
all Summers rifled from the veins

where fever burned some time before,
before the closing of a door,
before the silence and the drouth
of a blasted heart, a barren mouth.

Step forth, snow-mantled Death, and strew
your blight upon the living, brew
up storms, that all the birds take wing.
You'll be a fool again, come Spring.

- WAB

The trouble with this thread is that the poems we post here are visible to those who might condemn them as "published". I was about to add one but stayed my hand when I realised it is currently with an editor being considered for a journal. Also, to put a poem that's published already feels like cheating and, worse, vanity posting. I think many of us may be trammelled by these considerations.

The Black History thread was different in that there was an element of discussion and we were posting other people's poetry, and the "news of the day" threads call for ephemeral squibs.

I may be wrong, but I didn't want you to feel sidelined, Ralph and Bill.

What say you, Jayne?

I kind of considered that, Ann, but then I thought, I have no intention of trying to publish the poem I posted here anyway. Maybe in an appendix of juvenilia in that BIG book long after I'm dead?

Maybe we could just post Spring poems by other poets?

Then again, it's Ralph's thread...Whad'ya say, Ralph?

Jayne?

Ann?






Maria!! Maria!! :D



Hi! Julie!

So far as I know, there's no rule to suggest that "own poetry" should not be posted on D&A. That's one of the ways it's different from the other forums.

I just wanted you to understand why I, for one, and possibly many others, do not join in with our own work on some of these threads.

I'll post a favourite poem by a favourite poet. I have never written anything even half as good...

Spring

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Yes, any and all favorites about spring are what I meant to say, and "as you will" didn't say it! Thanks for the Hopkins, one of my favorites. Oh, and this isn't one I intended to publish, more for the fun of it.

Sinus Song
 

Here’s another I drag out every spring and won’t attempt to publish:


More Ancient Music

Ralph’s version

(After Anon and Ezra)

Springtide is now coming in
Loudly sing Achoo!
Pollen drifts and gives me fits
And how the sneezes echo!

Sing: Achoo!
Burns my eyes and causes sighs
An ague has my head.
Melts the snow and makes nose blow

And sinuses to bleed anew.
Achoo I sing: Achoo!
Damn you, Achoo! You’re why I’m blue
And so eschew your springtime brew

To sing Achoo, Achoo, NOW!


Cuccu Song

(Middle English)

Svmer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu
Groweþ sed
and bloweþ med
and springþ þe wde nu
Sing cuccu

Awe bleteþ after lomb
lhouþ after calue cu
Bulluc sterteþ
bucke uerteþ

murie sing cuccu
Cuccu cuccu
Wel singes þu cuccu
ne swik þu nauer nu

Sing cuccu nu • Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu • Sing cuccu nu


Cuckoo Song

(Modern English)

Spring has arrived,
Loudly sing, cuckoo!
The seed is growing
And the meadow is blooming,
And the wood is coming into leaf now,
Sing, cuckoo!

The ewe is bleating after her lamb,
The cow is lowing after her calf;
The bullock is prancing,
The billy-goat farting,

Sing merrily, cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo,
You sing well, cuckoo,
Never stop now.

Sing, cuckoo, now; sing, cuckoo;
Sing, cuckoo; sing, cuckoo, now!

Hey, folks, don't forget the title of this board: Drills & Amusements.

A thread such as this one is just for sharing a bit of fun; the poems aren't for critique, nor are they competition entries, so we can all feel free to post any poems about spring, be they our own or someone else's.

(But yes, I'd say hold back from posting work you may wish to submit to a publication, now or later.)

Now, where on earth is that poem I wrote when I first started out? . . . I'd completely forgotten about it till now - and it would be perfect for this thread. (Going off to search . . . but don't hold your breath ;) It's buried somewhere, before I had a clue about saving work in ''folders''.)

Jayne

Hey, Ralph!

Unfortunately, I can't read "Sumer Is Icumen In" without the tune running through my head, and I can't make yours cooperate with the music that Anon's (obviously) and Ezra Pound's fit so well.

There's a YouTube version of a nice performance here. Note that the Pes 1 and Pes 2 ("pes" is Latin for "foot") parts chase each other in their own little mini-round throughout--playing footsie?--beneath the main round. And here are links to the original and modernized sheet music, if you want to sing along.)

One of the greatest Spring poems ever, by one of the most underrated American poets from C20:

***

Winter's End

Once in a wood at winter's end,
The withered sun, becoming young,
Turned the white silence into sound:
Bird after bird rose up in song.
The skeletons of snow-blocked trees
Linked thinning shadows here and there,
And those made mummy by the freeze
Spangled their mirrors on cold air.
Whether they moved — perhaps they spun,
Caught in a new but known delight —
Was hard to tell, since shade and sun
Mingled to hear the birds recite.
No body of this sound I saw,
So glassed and shining was the world
That swung on a sun-and-ice seesaw
And fought to have its leaves unfurled.
Hanging its harvest in between
Two worlds, one lost, one yet to come,
The wood's remoteness, like a drum,
Beat the oncoming season in.
Then every snow bird on white wings
Became its tropic counterpart,
And, in a renaissance of rings,
I saw the heart of summer start.

— Howard Moss