Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself
At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow…
It would have been outside.It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep’s faded papier-mache…
The sun was coming from the outside.That scrawny cry–It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.—Wallace Stevens
It wasn’t necessarily the earliest ending of winter, nor the last. It only happened to be the vernal equinox. And so this Springtime of 2006 is ushered in with snow storms across much of the country and a cold soaking rain for the Upstate. I’ll be happy when the sun wends its way a little further northward. But not too far north.