Poem in Spring

James Merrill

Being born of earth, we've come to sit
On fecund ground and fondle it -
A filial diversion this.
Then brother-sisterly we kiss
Who cannot tell one branch for buds
Nor see, for trees, the April woods
Cloudy with green nor, amorous,
Think autumn looks askance at us.


Our father by his hour-glass
Drowsing, approves the pretty pass;
Our mother dresses even now
In young girls' finery, as though
To tempt her sons to a Greek deed
In the green shade of her great need.
Come, with their prime example, love
Only those things we're parcel of.

For innocence is useful, too,
In springtime. Sister, let us woo
Complications of limb and leaf
And our own limbs and their one life,
As all is wooed by earth and season.
The single beauty in such treason
- Apart from penance done too late -
Is that it is immediate.

In good time time enough there'll be
No more, dear orphaned love, to see
The trees for the sapped forest, or
Dropped leaves for the brown forest floor:
Gold they will fall, incestuous gold
The personal, and soon be mould,
Indictment of our days that in
Such curious vividness begin.