Monday, April 24, 2017

Try, try, again, afresh afresh afresh

Bloody hell [she says in fake Britishness], I schemed but utterly failed not to turn into a pudding while writing over the winter. 
I repeat myself, but I keep marveling at how it gets harder at mid-life to pop back up like a bouncy toy--more like dragging yourself out of bed, requiring a gigantic effort of will. Not my strong suit.

I chant the last line of this poem, the only Philip Larkin thing I like (that I know of) to GET MYSELF MOVING this morning, off to the YW after mumble mumble months away and sampling many springtime brews.
Ugh. Here I go.
 

"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.


by Philip Larkin

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