The Trees
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
Phillip Larkin
from The Collected Poems (Faber, 1993), by permission of the publisher, Faber & Faber Ltd.
The world is racing ahead. The sky is sliced open with spring light and into the space bird song is pouring. There doesn’t seem time to understand it, to count it, to measure it. This is the blood in the veins . This is life.
Thanks for sharing this – Larkin’s verse is so clever with death and burgeoning birth entwined. The unresting castles is a great image – hope warm sunshine finds you and those bursting buds soon.
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Larkin makes verse seem so effortless, but he encompasses so much so lightly!
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Good post and poem, very apt for the time of year. xx
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Glad you enjoyed it! xx
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Lovely. The trees always have so much to say, if we dare to listen.
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They are most eloquent of quiet creatures!
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