monday poem #83: Louise Glück, "Snowdrops"
I've posted from Glück's work before, and have been meaning to get around to reading more of her work ever since.
The Wild Iris is an astonishingly beautiful book, if a little chilly in places. It uses (the voices of) flowers, trees, weather and seasons to grapple in concrete terms with the abstractions of love and faith. It's one of my favorite books of poetry so far this year.
Snowdrops
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring-
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
- Louise Glück
from The Wild Iris
The Wild Iris is an astonishingly beautiful book, if a little chilly in places. It uses (the voices of) flowers, trees, weather and seasons to grapple in concrete terms with the abstractions of love and faith. It's one of my favorite books of poetry so far this year.
Snowdrops
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring-
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
- Louise Glück
from The Wild Iris