What's O'Clock/Primavera

by Amy Lowell

PRIMAVERA

Spring has arrived.
It is no use your telling me to look at the calendar,
And saying that it is five good days to the twenty-first of March.
Is the year bound to obey the almanac-makers?
O model of all egregious pedants!
Would you shackle Spring to times and seasons,
And catch her back by her long green skirt
Till the moment you have planned for her?
She has stolen a march this year, for certain.
To-day, at sunrise, I saw a white-breasted nut-hatch
Running up the branch of the oak-tree
That was so broken by the ice-storm last December,
And in the garden a pheasant was picking grains
Out of the manure covering the garden-beds.
There is a snowdrop up by the porch,
Shot clean through the tulip-straw;
And the crows are all agog over my neighbour's pine-trees.
It is a game of catch-who-catch-can with that green skirt then.
Even though, in your passion for order, you bring about a snow storm to-morrow,
It will not matter to me.
This morning, beyond the shadow of a doubt, I saw the Spring.