As night follows day and age follows youth, so the seasons move along whether or not we humans are loving, reproducing, fighting infection or dying. Walls fall, buildings fall, whole cities and empires fall. But, for now at least, the flowers and plants and trees continue to grow, Earth turns, and after the dark comes the dawn. Further lockdown measures have been “eased” and the crowds (mostly socially distancing, but not always) are returning to beauty spots. After Summer, the Autumn will come, and Winter will be here anon. In the meantime, Phllip Larkin’s poem The Trees has been on my mind on recent walks.
The Trees
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
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