A Poem for Every Spring Day Read online

  2 March • The Bright Field • R. S. Thomas

  R. S. Thomas was another proudly Welsh poet. A clergyman for much of his life, his poems are often very spiritual in nature, and he frequently makes reference to Bible stories, as he does here with Moses and the burning bush. This poem is about how we live in the present moment. If life is not about the past or future, then it is about finding the right to look at the things directly in front of us, now.

  I have seen the sun break through

  to illuminate a small field

  for a while, and gone my way

  and forgotten it. But that was the

  pearl of great price, the one field that had

  treasure in it. I realize now

  that I must give all that I have

  to possess it. Life is not hurrying

  on to a receding future, nor hankering after

  an imagined past. It is the turning

  aside like Moses to the miracle

  of the lit bush, to a brightness

  that seemed as transitory as your youth

  once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

  2 March • March • Anon.

  This traditional and simple rhyme hails originally from Northumberland. The strange word ‘yeans’ is from the local dialect, and means ‘gives birth to’. The month of March is here described as a time in which new life springs forth – lambs frolic and thorns bloom into roses – but also a period in which the wind can be bitter and strong enough to blow through to the core of an ox’s horn.

  March yeans the lammie

  And buds the thorn,

  And blows through the flint

  Of an ox’s horn.

  3 March • Anger Against Beasts • Wendell Berry

  Today is World Wildlife Day. In this short yet visceral poem, the prolific American writer, philosopher, environmental activist – and farmer – Wendell Berry laments the unnatural and senseless acts of violence which humans inflict on animals.

  The hook of adrenalin shoves

  into the blood. Man’s will,

  long skilled to kill or have

  its way, would drive the beast

  against nature, transcend

  the impossible in simple fury.

  The blow falls like a dead seed.

  It is defeat for beasts

  do not pardon, but heal or die

  in the absence of the past.

  The blow survives in the man.

  His triumph is a wound. Spent,

  he must wait the slow

  unalterable forgiveness of time.

  3 March • Dear March – Come In • Emily Dickinson

  This poem observes the paradox of the seasons: Emily Dickinson both praises and blames March for its beauty and its brevity.

  Dear March – Come in –

  How glad I am –

  I hoped for you before –

  Put down your Hat –

  You must have walked –

  How out of Breath you are –

  Dear March, how are you, and the Rest –

  Did you leave Nature well –

  Oh March, Come right upstairs with me –

  I have so much to tell –

  I got your Letter, and the Birds –

  The Maples never knew that you were coming – till I called

  I declare – how Red their Faces grew –

  But March, forgive me – and

  All those Hills you left for me to Hue –

  There was no Purple suitable –

  You took it all with you –

  Who knocks? That April –

  Lock the Door –

  I will not be pursued –

  He stayed away a Year to call

  When I am occupied –

  But trifles look so trivial

  As soon as you have come

  That Blame is just as dear as Praise

  And Praise as mere as Blame –

  4 March • Holi • Chrissie Gittins

  Holi is a Hindu festival that falls at this time of year. It is known as the ‘Festival of Colours’. To mark the triumph of good (spring) over evil (winter), festival-goers brightly colour one another with handfuls of paints and dyed water balloons. Chrissie Gittins’s poem imagines a language being made out of the colourful marks of the festival.

  A splodge of purple on your neck

  and you can feel the temperature rising.

  A rub of brown on your cheek

  and your friend is your friend for ever.

  A cloud of red above your head

  and your feet start itching to dance.

  A scatter of yellow on your shirt

  and your enemy is now your friend.

  A blotch of blue on your nose

  and the winter is soon forgotten.

  A bucket of black down your back

  and you are ready to beat the drum.

  A stream of orange in the air

  and your heart begins to surge.

  A smear of pink on your forehead

  and your misdeeds fade away.

  A dusting of green on your eyelashes –

  spring is surely on its way.

  4 March • A Date with Spring • John Agard

  This poem is a first-person monologue from the perspective of the tree itself, imagining the end of winter as a time where the tree prepares to get dressed ready for a ‘date’ with the new season – spring.

  Got a date with spring

  Got to look me best.

  Of all the trees

  I’ll be the smartest dressed.

  Perfumed breeze

  behind me ear.

  Pollen accessories

  all in place.

  Raindrop moisturizer

  for me face.

  Sunlight tints

  to spruce up the hair.

  What’s the good of being a tree

  if you can’t flaunt your beauty?

  Winter, I was naked

  Exposed as can be.

  Me wardrobe took off

  with the wind.

  Life was a frosty slumber.

  Now, spring, here I come.

  Can’t wait to slip in

  to me little green number.

  5 March • The River in March • Ted Hughes

  Ted Hughes was one of the greatest British poets of the twentieth century, and was Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998. He is mainly known for his nature poetry, often in deceptively plain language, and his poems show a great respect for the natural world.

  Now the river is rich, but her voice is low.

  It is her Mighty Majesty the sea

  Travelling among the villages incognito.

  Now the river is poor. No song, just a thin mad whisper.

  The winter floods have ruined her.

  She squats between draggled banks, fingering her rags and rubbish.

  And now the river is rich. A deep choir.

  It is the lofty clouds, that work in heaven,

  Going on their holiday to the sea.

  The river is poor again. All her bones are showing.

  Through a dry wig of bleached flotsam she peers up ashamed

  From her slum of sticks.

  Now the river is rich, collecting shawls and minerals.

  Rain brought fatness, but she takes ninety-nine percent

  Leaving the fields just one percent to survive on.

  And now she is poor. Now she is East wind sick.

  She huddles in holes and corners. The brassy sun gives her a headache.

  She has lost all her fish. And she shivers.

  But now once more she is rich. She is viewing her lands.

  A hoard of king-cups spills from her folds, it blazes, it cannot be hidden.

  A salmon, a sow of solid silver,

  Bulges to glimpse it.

  5 March • Spring • Gerard Manley Hopkins

  This sonnet begins by describing the beautiful qualities of spring, before comparing it to the garde
n of Eden.

  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.

  6 March • Young Lambs • John Clare

  We measure the seasons through a cycle of events. With the approach of spring, the season of new life, we see the arrival of young farmyard animals. John Clare celebrates the coming season with the lightness of his rhymes in this poem about lambs. Even in relating this jubilant display of life, however, Clare’s poem seems drawn to the dark imagery of death.

  The spring is coming by a many signs;

  The trays are up, the hedges broken down,

  That fenced the haystack, and the remnant shines

  Like some old antique fragment weathered brown.

  And where suns peep, in every sheltered place,

  The little early buttercups unfold

  A glittering star or two – till many trace

  The edges of the blackthorn clumps in gold.

  And then a little lamb bolts up behind

  The hill and wags his tail to meet the yoe,

  And then another, sheltered from the wind,

  Lies all his length as dead – and lets me go

  Close by and never stirs, but beaking lies,

  With legs stretched out as though he could not rise.

  6 March • To My Sister • William Wordsworth

  Like Ted Hughes and John Clare, and an inspiration to them both, Wordsworth was a great poet of nature. And, like Hughes, he was also Poet Laureate. This poem is a celebration of taking the time to enjoy a beautiful day, away from work and responsibilities.

  It is the first mild day of March:

  Each minute sweeter than before,

  The red-breast sings from the tall larch

  That stands beside our door.

  There is a blessing in the air,

  Which seems a sense of joy to yield

  To the bare trees, and mountains bare,

  And grass in the green field.

  My Sister! (’tis a wish of mine)

  Now that our morning meal is done,

  Make haste, your morning task resign;

  Come forth and feel the sun.

  Edward will come with you – and, pray,

  Put on with speed your woodland dress,

  And bring no book: for this one day

  We’ll give to idleness.

  No joyless forms shall regulate

  Our living Calendar:

  We from today, my friend, will date

  The opening of the year.

  Love, now an universal birth,

  From heart to heart is stealing,

  From earth to man, from man to earth –

  It is the hour of feeling.

  One moment now may give us more

  Than fifty years of reason;

  Our minds shall drink at every pore

  The spirit of the season.

  Some silent laws our hearts will make,

  Which they shall long obey:

  We for the year to come may take

  Our temper from today.

  And from the blessed power that rolls

  About, below, above,

  We’ll frame the measure of our souls:

  They shall be tuned to love.

  Then come, my sister! come, I pray,

  With speed put on your woodland dress,

  And bring no book: for this one day

  We’ll give to idleness.

  7 March • But These Things Also • Edward Thomas

  Edward Thomas wrote this poem in 1915, and its message carries memories of the great losses that occurred in the winter of 1914 during the First World War.

  But these things also are Spring’s—

  On banks by the roadside the grass

  Long-dead that is greyer now

  Than all the Winter it was;

  The shell of a little snail bleached

  In the grass; chip of flint, and mite

  Of chalk; and the small birds’ dung

  In splashes of purest white:

  All the white things a man mistakes

  For earliest violets

  Who seeks through Winter’s ruins

  Something to pay Winter’s debts,

  While the North blows, and starling flocks

  By chattering on and on

  Keep their spirits up in the mist,

  And Spring’s here, Winter’s not gone.

  7 March • The Sound Collector • Roger McGough

  On 7 March 1876 the inventor Alexander Graham Bell patented an object which changed the human experience of sound and communication forever: the telephone. This poem by Roger McGough imagines everyday sounds as objects which might be put into a bag and carried away.

  A stranger called this morning

  Dressed all in black and grey

  Put every sound into a bag

  And carried them away

  The whistling of the kettle

  The turning of the lock

  The purring of the kitten

  The ticking of the clock

  The popping of the toaster

  The crunching of the flakes

  When you spread the marmalade

  The scraping noise it makes

  The hissing of the frying pan

  The ticking of the grill

  The bubbling of the bathtub

  As it starts to fill

  The drumming of the raindrops

  On the windowpane

  When you do the washing-up

  The gurgle of the drain

  The crying of the baby

  The squeaking of the chair

  The swishing of the curtain

  The creaking of the stair

  A stranger called this morning

  He didn’t leave his name

  Left us only silence

  Life will never be the same

  8 March • Warning • Jenny Joseph

  8 March is International Women’s Day, a celebration of the political, social and cultural achievements of women everywhere. The day exists as a symbol of the victories made so far in the struggle for gender equality, although its existence is also a sign that equality has not yet been gained. Jenny Joseph’s warm and comical poem makes fun of the rules that seem to govern being a woman in modern society, and it represents a quiet but important act of female defiance.

  When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

  With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

  And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

  And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

  I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired

  And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

  And run my stick along the public railings

  And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

  I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

  And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens

  And learn to spit.

  You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

  And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

  Or only bread and pickle for a week

  And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

  But now w
e must have clothes that keep us dry

  And pay our rent and not swear in the street

  And set a good example for the children.

  We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

  But maybe I ought to practise a little now?

  So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

  When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

  8 March • Phenomenal Woman • Maya Angelou

  Here we have another great, rousing poem that celebrates womanhood in all its variety. Much like Jenny Joseph’s ‘Warning’, this piece encourages women to take pride in who they are, and to reject dated, restrictive societal expectations about how a woman should be. It is one of countless inspiring poems by Maya Angelou – the pioneering African American writer who was a tireless champion of civil rights, women’s rights, and by all accounts, a ‘phenomenal woman’ herself.

  Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

  I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size

  But when I start to tell them,

  They think I’m telling lies.

  I say,

  It’s in the reach of my arms,

  The span of my hips,

  The stride of my step,

  The curl of my lips.

  I’m a woman

  Phenomenally.

  Phenomenal woman,

  That’s me.

  I walk into a room

  Just as cool as you please,

  And to a man,

  The fellows stand or

  Fall down on their knees.

  Then they swarm around me,

  A hive of honey bees.

  I say,

  It’s the fire in my eyes,

  And the flash of my teeth,

  The swing in my waist,

  And the joy in my feet.

  I’m a woman

  Phenomenally.

  Phenomenal woman,

  That’s me.

  Men themselves have wondered

  What they see in me.

  They try so much

  But they can’t touch

  My inner mystery.

  When I try to show them,

  They say they still can’t see.

  I say,

  It’s in the arch of my back,

  The sun of my smile,

  The ride of my breasts,

  The grace of my style.

  I’m a woman

  Phenomenally.