Sea Room

Against Spring

Against Spring Daffodils try sarcasm now, along rivers, carelessly slouched above dirty collars of snow. One hidden, purplish bulb regenerates more impudence. All winter I was nourished by laughters and sickened by names. I loved my avenues deformed by ice. Visitors, who came at risk, found no one in, but I was there. If cold memory walked a long way and waited through night upon the landing, I heard its tuneless whistling from my chair beside the arid reading lamp. Outside a modesty heaped up the way a virgin pulls her sheet to hide her own repugnance. Even so, the sun intensified, and hovered in a dizzy ring. Its tepid glare awakened even the minuscule; the spiders unraveled their hammocks and all resumed one lazy appetite. I resisted spring, its noxious little rains, the reactivated worms and roots which probe immovable things. I praise the dullest sentiments of stone, the pure indifferent matters unblemished by this green. A bird sings one rare note out of boredom, an awful chirp which fanatics like to think depicts a certain loyalty or love's alarm. And look, a girl pulls off the head 10 of her own daisy so foolishly. Jealous December, buried beneath exuberant mosses, I can't forget you. Now ivy crawls over institutions for the incurable, and gardens fatten with wax. Let numerous societies hold hands, the lilacs and bees perform. I preferred the blank shoots of frost, imperishable blossoms on my glass. Not for love, its irritating greens and golds, the Aprils, the Mays, will I change my disposition— when desires grow back and thicken like grasses, and the little ants gather beneath the stone. ii ...