April and the Flowery Hosts
April Flowers -- Ellen Cox
A Poet I heard crying
April is the cruellest month.
I feel offended.
April brings flowers in millions
Lined across vales
Who invite men to shed their heavy weight
And dance with them to the tunes
Of the vagrant winds.
Don’t ask for a life like flowers.
You are asking for suicide.
Evening is their expiry time.
April is the cruellest month.
I feel offended.
April brings flowers in millions
Lined across vales
Who invite men to shed their heavy weight
And dance with them to the tunes
Of the vagrant winds.
Don’t ask for a life like flowers.
You are asking for suicide.
Evening is their expiry time.
Nothing in life can stay happy for years.
For joy is a momentary game.
Meant for flashy seconds
Not to last for years.
If you really wish to keep smiling
And spreading fragrance
While you are alive
You need a great training of your mind.
For joy is a momentary game.
Meant for flashy seconds
Not to last for years.
If you really wish to keep smiling
And spreading fragrance
While you are alive
You need a great training of your mind.
For body is only a little bit
Man lives for most part in his mind.
Whatever they have
Flowers spend it out by the evening.
We who try to lock up our joys
Cannot go happy like them.
If we too open out our petals
And give away our treasures
People will find us
Full of fragrance and admire our
Divinity.
To be sublime and divine,
And smile like flowers
You need a mind which is trained
In feeling joy when you surrender
And give it all away.
Welcome! Dear April.
The sweetest month of flowers.
But shocking for us humans.
Who make sacks of our bodies
And graves of our minds.
Man lives for most part in his mind.
Whatever they have
Flowers spend it out by the evening.
We who try to lock up our joys
Cannot go happy like them.
If we too open out our petals
And give away our treasures
People will find us
Full of fragrance and admire our
Divinity.
To be sublime and divine,
And smile like flowers
You need a mind which is trained
In feeling joy when you surrender
And give it all away.
Welcome! Dear April.
The sweetest month of flowers.
But shocking for us humans.
Who make sacks of our bodies
And graves of our minds.
April is the cruellest month, breeding
ReplyDeleteLilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
--T. S. Eliot, from "The Burial of the Dead" in "The Waste Land"