I feel discontented. … everything seems to have a layer of dust on top of it, including my psyche. Probably it means I have been on the computer too much, but I think there’s more to it than that. Incipient spring, perhaps? Anyway, since it’s April maybe a good time for a poem by Richard Wilbur, hat tip to Laudator Temporis Acti:
The air was soft, the ground still cold.
In the dull pasture where I strolled
Was something I could not believe.
Dead grass appeared to slide and heave,
Though still too frozen-flat to stir,
And rocks to twitch, and all to blur.
What was this rippling of the land?
Was matter getting out of hand
And making free with natural law?
I stopped and blinked, and then I saw
A fact as eerie as a dream,
There was a subtle flood of steam
Moving upon the face of things.
It came from standing pools and springs
And what of snow was still around;
It came of winter’s giving ground
So that the freeze was coming out,
As when a set mind, blessed by doubt,
Relaxes into mother-wit.
Flowers, I said, will come of it.
