Craving For Spring

I wish it were spring in the world.     Let it be spring!     Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!     Come, rush of creation!     Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!     Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first- flowers,     which are rather last-flowers!     Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:     snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,     flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,     jets of exquisite finality;     Come, spring, make havoc of them!     I trample on the snowdrops, it gives me pleasure to tread down the jonquils,     to destroy the chill Lent lilies;     for I am sick of them, their faint-bloodedness,     slow-blooded, icy-fleshed, portentous.     I want the fine, kindling wine-sap of spring,     gold, and of inconceivably fine, quintessential brightness,     rare almost as beams, yet overwhelmingly potent,     strong like the greatest force of world-balancing.     This is the same that picks up the harvest of wheat     and rocks it, tons of grain, on the ripening wind;     the same that dangles the globe-shaped pleiads of fruit     temptingly in mid-air, between a playful thumb and finger;     oh, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, whirls the pear-bloom,     upon us, and apple- and almond- and apricot- and quince-blossom,     storms and cumulus clouds of all imaginable blossom     about our bewildered faces,     though we do not worship.     I wish it were spring     cunningly blowing on the fallen sparks, odds and ends of the old, scattered fire,     and kindling shapely little conflagrations     curious long-legged foals, and wide-eared calves, and naked sparrow-bubs.     I wish that spring     would start the thundering traffic of feet     new feet on the earth, beating with impatience.     I wish it were spring, thundering     delicate, tender spring.     I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of passionate, mysterious corruption     were not yet to come still more from the still-flickering discontent.     Oh, in the spring, the bluebell bows him down for very exuberance,     exulting with secret warm excess,     bowed down with his inner magnificence!     Oh, yes, the gush of spring is strong enough     to toss the globe of earth like a ball on a water-jet     dancing sportfully;     as you see a tiny celluloid ball tossing on a squint of water     for men to shoot at, penny-a-time, in a booth at a fair.     The gush of spring is strong enough     to play with the globe of earth like a ball on a fountain;     At the same time it opens the tiny hands of the hazel     with such infinite patience.     The power of the rising, golden, all-creative sap could take the earth     and heave it off among the stars, into the in- visible;     the same sets the throstle at sunset on a bough     singing against the blackbird;     comes out in the hesitating tremor of the primrose,     and betrays its candour in the round white strawberry flower,     is dignified in the foxglove, like a Red-Indian brave.     Ah come, come quickly, spring!     Come and lift us towards our culmination, we myriads;     we who have never flowered, like patient cactuses.     Come and lift us to our end, to blossom, bring us to our summer     we who are winter-weary in the winter of the world.     Come making the chaffinch nests hollow and cosy,     come and soften the willow buds till they are puffed and furred,     then blow them over with gold.     Come and cajole the gawky colt's-foot flowers.     Come quickly, and vindicate us     against too much death.     Come quickly, and stir the rotten globe of the world from within,     burst it with germination, with world anew.     Come now, to us, your adherents, who cannot flower from the ice.     All the world gleams with the lilies of Death the Unconquerable,     but come, give us our turn.     Enough of the virgins and lilies, of passionate, suffocating perfume of corruption,     no more narcissus perfume, lily harlots, the blades of sensation     piercing the flesh to blossom of death.     Have done, have done with this shuddering, delicious business     of thrilling ruin in the flesh, of pungent passion, of rare, death-edged ecstasy.     Give us our turn, give us a chance, let our hour strike,     O soon, soon!     Let the darkness turn violet with rich dawn.     Let the darkness be warmed, warmed through to a ruddy violet,     incipient purpling towards summer in the world of the heart of man.     Are the violets already here!     Show me! I tremble so much to hear it, that even now     on the threshold of spring, I fear I shall die.     Show me the violets that are out.     Oh, if it be true, and the living darkness of the blood of man is purpling with violets,     if the violets are coming out from under the rack of men, winter-rotten and fallen     we shall have spring.     Pray not to die on this Pisgah blossoming with violets.     Pray to live through.     If you catch a whiff of violets from the darkness of the shadow of man     it will be spring in the world,     it will be spring in the world of the living;     wonderment organising itself, heralding itself with the violets,     stirring of new seasons.     Ah, do not let me die on the brink of such anticipation!     Worse, let me not deceive myself.      ZENNOR