Spring has Come
Spring has come; the grass is young
Time is moving on
But I am mired in blackest night
Despairing of the dawn
New things grow; fresh winds blow
Nature wakes from sleep
But I’m a stranger to the light
All I can do is weep
Inside my heart there is a part
Wishes it could feel
But I know nothing of delight
Those feelings are not real
Trees with broken branches grow
And weeds and fungi thrive
But I am empty as a hole
Just nominally alive
I’ve been a fool; I went to school
Worked hard as I knew how
Swallowed lies without a bite
And just look at me now
My love was given to a girl
Who bedded my best friend
The pattern was repeated
And I can spot a trend
It’s a funny world we live in
A funny world indeed
But I am not now laughing
And from my tears I bleed
William's despair in this poem is camouflaged by its rollicking rhythm; if one hears the sound without paying attention to he words, one would probably mistake its intent. In an opposite way, Theodore Roethke used rhythm to express his love for his father, belying the dark images his words suggest, in My Papa’s Waltz:
ReplyDeleteThe whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.