From Round the Still Earth, a cycle of winter songs.


Tentative caresses stray round the still earth from immensity. (from 'Early Spring' by Rainer Maria Rilke).

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 thay 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.

('The Trees' by Philip Larkin)