I still enjoy the illusory promise of a pastel and lovely spring as E.E. Cummings likes to imagine “where the flowers pick themselves.” Enjoy these literary explorations of the other side of a murkier April along with a spring imagined as always bright, always sunny.
The Saddest Noise, The Sweetest Noise
The saddest noise, the sweetest noise, The maddest noise that grows, The birds, they make it in the spring, At night’s delicious close. Between the March and April line, It makes us think of all the dead That sauntered with us here, By separation’s sorcery Made cruelty more dear. It makes us think of what we had, “It’s that magnificent interlude in New York between winter and spring, when you feel the warmth stirring, and you remember that the dreadful naked trees will inevitably sprout tiny green buds, soon. Everyone rushes into the parks, the streets—and you even forget that, very soon, summer will come scorchingly, dropping from the sky like a blanket of steam…” —John Rechy, City of Night “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” —Pablo Neruda, Chilean Poet and Nobel Prize Winner 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. —Edna St. Vincent Millay, Second April “I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.” —Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: If we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” —Anne Bradstreet, [Meditations Divine and Moral] The Works of Anne Bradstreet
Sonnet
I had no thought of violets of late, The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet In wistful April days, when lovers mate And wander through the fields in raptures sweet. The thought of violets means florists’ shops, And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine; And garish lights, and mincing little fops And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine. So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed, I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams; The perfect loveliness that God hath made,— Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams. And now—unwittingly, you’ve made me dream Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam. —Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Harlem Renaissance Writer Always it’s Spring (and everyone’s in love and flowers pick themselves.” —E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems Come with me into the woods where spring is advancing, as it does, no matter what, not being singular or particular, but one of the forever gifts, and certainly visible. —Mary Oliver, Dog Songs “At the best of times, spring hurts depressives.” —Angela Carter, Shadow Dance by Angela Carter “Spring is made of solid, fourteen-karat gratitude, the reward for the long wait. Every religious tradition from the northern hemisphere honors some form of April hallelujah, for this is the season of exquisite redemption, a slam-bang return to joy after a season of cold second thoughts.” —Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” —Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard’s Egg Spring passes and one remember’s one’s innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance. Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance. —Yoko Ono
