THE ALLEGORY OF SPRING

THE ALLEGORY OF SPRING

THE ALLEGORY OF SPRING

What pleasures we might find
    pass on.
Nothing to be done. Like air
    they are not long
 
to be held. Fast shadows darken
    fresh grass
and most of what we know
    grows bored
 
inside us. Like the sadness
    of money.
Like the measure of a median life,
    a McLife
 
like this one, rising to fall, falling
    to rise.
Yet here comes everyone—
   one by one
 
they peep their heads,
    creep out
from the dark to bud and spume
    like wild
 
fire into a teeming forest. There is
    something
mental about birth. You couldn't
    make it up:
 
the fury in seeds. Death not out-
    done. Death out-
doing us, our ceremonies,
   reaching
 
for the intangible, the way
    it drifts,
like mist from a scalded
    teapot,
 
the tint of irises we never
    notice
in the vase, in the corner of
    the room,
 
until they're dying. Or that scent
    of moss
in the cover of the wood, creeping
    thistle,
 
greenfinches trilling in the brake as if
    for us,
on that walk I never wanted to take
    then dreamed
  
about for nineteen years. Oh lay
    me low.
Convolvulus and daffodils, the glissade
    of beech leaves.
 
Lay me down in a shaded glade, though I
    could count
the woods I've walked through in the past
    nineteen years
 
on one hand, and I've probably been
    to Tescos
four thousand times, taking four times
    a week
 
as a likely average. The soft prickle
    of twayblade.
Fingers in the soil. Grass in the mouth.
    Soft docken
 
leaves on buttercup-stained skin.
    What I like
best are garden centres, the calm trickle
    of their water
 
features, customers reverential in the
     ambience
of high ferns and pot plants. If we could rip
    the veil of habit,
 
witness the world truly, we would
    throw up.
And I hear their low moan, a woman
    and man
 
fucking in a supermarket
    toilet
because they've had it up to here. Hands on
    her buttocks,
 
he tries to look the way he thinks
    he should
look, though his back hurts. Foxglove
    and may bells,
 
hair on willow-herb, nipples, genitals,
    cellophane.
He hopes she's feeling what she should
    be feeling.
 
She feels the muffled sorrow
    and need
in the breath of pleasure. When he comes
    she hugs him
 
but can't wrap herself around all
    this plenty.
Done, they close their eyes and cradle
    themselves
 
in that blindness. Then, as we all do,
    hoping
for the best, they creep through the door,
    one by one.