Begin afresh, afresh, afresh

[j4]

Psimont may complain about the weather, but I think it's beautiful; it's nothing like summer, it's pure spring. The air is still fresh, still shivery in the shade; and the light still has that raw edge of winter sun, low rays shining through the trees, pouring dappled light on to the dewy grass.

For me, spring is full of promise, of new life, of reaching out and grasping at every burst of light, every bud, every unfurling leaf. Summer, by contrast, is lethargic and slow; the summer sun weighs heavy on even the brightest flowers, and the summer air is cloying, oppressive, thick with decadence and disappointment. Summer promises everything and fails to deliver; but with Spring every sunbeam is an unexpected gift, every snowdrop is a diamond in the dirt, every moment of warmth is a swift and fierce embrace from a new love.

So why does light through new leaves bring tears to my eyes? Because the beginning is always the beginning of the end, the wheel always turns. No matter how free and clear the air feels, no matter how the sun sparkles on the river or shines on budding romances; no matter how lightly the hours pass, still they pass.

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.

-- Philip Larkin

* * *

'I'm rising five,' he said,
'Not four,' and little coils of hair
Unclicked themselves upon his head.
His spectacles, brimful of eyes to stare
At me and the meadow, reflected cones of light
Above his toffee buckled cheeks. He'd been alive
Fifty-six months or perhaps a week more: not four,
But rising five.
Around him in the field the cells of spring
Bubbled and doubled; buds unbuttoned; shoot
And stem shook out the creases from their frills,
And every tree was swilled with green.
It was the season after blossoming,
Before the forming of the fruit: not May,
But rising June.

And in the sky
The dusk dissected the tangential light:
not day,
But rising night;
not now,
But rising soon.

The new buds push the old leaves from the bough.
We drop our youth behind us like a boy
Throwing away his toffee wrappers. We never see the flower,
But only the fruit in the flower; never the fruit,
But only the rot in the fruit. We look for the marriage bed
In the baby's cradle, we look for the grave in the bed: not living,
But rising dead.

-- Norman Nicholson

Comments

[lnr]

But I'm poetically illiterate. Reading the rest of that I don't believe you.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Almost word for word what I was going to say...

And I didn't forget the blossom, it's just not so central to the ... the imagery I use to think about these things. Perhaps because it is so much of a fixture of haiku, and haiku don't quite fit the way I feel around this time of year. They're too perfect and enclosed, whereas what I feel is more ... on the cusp of something, not complete in itself.

Again j4 fails to make any sense. <sigh>

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Again j4 fails to make any sense.

No, I understand you.

I've just been out taking some pictures of the blossom round here. But it didn't quite work - the light has gone. I shall try again tomorrow morning, before work.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

They're too perfect and enclosed, whereas what I feel is more ... on the cusp of something, not complete in itself.

Nascent ? Immanent ? At least there are words for this one.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Somewhere in that semantic spectrum, yes, but I'm not sure either is quite right. I want a word that expresses not just the beginningness, but the incompleteness. And again "incompleteness" isn't quite right...

It's like the swell of a wave, the moment just before it reaches the crest, just before it falls in a flurry of foam. But a wave isn't its rising or its falling alone, it's the whole process, the cycle; it's not quite "the grave in the marriage bed" etc., or if it is, it's also the cradle in the grave. I think spring is the upwards surge, but there needs to be a word for the-rising-of-something-whose-falling-is-inherent-in-its-rising, and vice versa. (It could be argued that everything that rises also falls, so a separate word isn't needed, but that would take away some of the fun of searching for the words.)

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's true; but I love blossom because it's short lived, and so briefly here. Haiku is also appealing because it celebrates the transitory nature of life and existence.

Er... Am I pissed, or what?

[j4.livejournal.com]

You may be pissed, but you're making sense to me. Maybe alcohol frees the meaning.

I do know what you mean about loving transitory things. (I still like making sandcastles for that very reason.) I just find haiku rather too self-contained... everything is intertwingled, interlinked, intertextual, hypertextual. (It could be just that haiku Just Don't Work in English, of course.)