Sunday, March 16, 2014

If it is spring, can winter be far behind?

The cold, cold days and nights are already are now a distant memory. 

A few days of sunshine, warmth, blue sky with puffy white clouds, have so easily erased from the mind the weeks of cold, overcast, rainy, windy, and even snowy and icy existence.

Life, itself, is like that. We so easily forget the bad in times of good and plenty.  The horrors of the past we forget and enjoy the moment.

If only life were an eternal spring.

Spring
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots,
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

2 comments:

Ramesh said...

For once, an awful poem. Enough said.

Spring time is not about morbid thoughts. Yes, we forget all the miseries of the past. And we should not dwell on the miseries around the corner. We should find moments of happiness, like spring and revel on them. Period !

Sriram Khé said...

It is a wonderful poem, my friend.
Yes, I appreciate your thoughts that spring ought to be about joyful celebration ... but, it occurred to me that we humans are almost hell bent on separating out the pains from the pleasures of life. But, life is a mixed bag that we have to live. After all, spring time, too, people die.
Perhaps it is all that irreverent and contrarian in me ;)