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
