everlasting resurrection

At the end of an unbelievably stressful and hectic month that never seemed to end, the first intimations of spring bring some signs of hope.

This winter of my discontent will soon be over, it will be.

Frostbitten and battle-scarred, but I've survived another one.

*       *       *

Weeping oaks grieve, chestnuts raise
mournful candles. Sad is spring
to perpetuate, sad to trace
immortalities never changing.


Weary on the sea
for sight of land
gazing past the coming wave we
see the same wave;


drift on merciless reiteration of years;
descry no death; but spring
is everlasting
resurrection.


--Basil Bunting, from First Book of Odes (1924) in Collected Poems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 75.