Poem of the Day: A.E. Housman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now 

Is hung with bloom along the bough, 

And stands about the woodland ride 

Wearing white for Eastertide. 

Now, of my threescore years and ten, 

Twenty will not come again, 

And take from seventy springs a score, 

It only leaves me fifty more. 

And since to look at things in bloom 

Fifty springs are little room, 

About the woodlands I will go 

To see the cherry hung with snow.

--A.E. Housman 

To those of us who are tired of the bogosity of "threescore years and ten" and who may have just seen their seventieth spring, I offer this response by Emily Grosholz to Housman:

Putting On the Ritz 

(For William Jules-Yves) 

After a long, cool winter, 

at last in May a suite 

of warm days wakes the sleepers 

One covered from crown to root 

in thick crepe skirtlets stops 

me, back from hibernation: 

Loveliest of trees, 

big as the Ritz's balletic 

vases charged with bloom.

Not bought, not concocted, 

only improbably real. 

Why am I not surprised? 

My hair is snowed with silver, 

evidence how little room 

fifty springs allow. 

And yet midwinter someone 

burst to life inside me, 

and lately started dancing. 

Just so improbably 

snow hung along the branches 

changed suddenly to flowers. 

--Emily Grosholz