Thursday, May 02, 2019

Poetry Friday: Philip Larkin's "The Trees"



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. 
....

Hear Larkin read the whole, short poem here, at The Poetry Archive, and I promise you that it's beautiful and not ultimately dreary, as one might presume from the aforementioned grief. Promise me you'll go see (or hear) for yourself.

~~~~~


The round-up this week is being hosted by the one, the only, the incredible Jama Rattigan at Jama's Alphabet Soup.

11 comments:

Linda Mitchell said...

I like the repetition in the last line...it does bring the mood of the poem up. Beautiful. And, a good one to listen to.

Linda B said...

I love this, Karen, & "is written down in rings of grain", a beautiful way of seeing! What poets do for us, right? Thank you!

jama said...

Oh,lovely! And surprising by poem's end. I feel better now (and our trees have finally gotten back all their leaves).

Alice Nine said...

You are so right: one must hear the whole poem read. This one is going in my common place notebook. The line "Like something being said" stood out to me because in "Spring," a poem I drafted this week, I wrote of flowers speaking: "Each leaf, each blossom speaks / a language that transcends / my mortal words."

tanita✿davis said...

This is in my collection of poems about Spring, but I, weirdly, like the grief connection, too. Every change of season has its joys and griefs.

Ruth said...

Afresh, afresh, afresh. Not always easy, but I'm glad to get the opportunity, year after year!

Molly Hogan said...

Those first two lines really grabbed me--that hint of something almost there...Our trees are just beginning to bud out and that fragile new shade of green is everywhere. That color alone says "afresh, afresh, afresh!"

Tabatha said...

Lovely. The trees have so much to say...they also say "bend in the wind" and "lean to the light" and "brace yourself" -- all good advice.

Cheriee Weichel said...

I love listening to him read this poem after reading it to myself a couple of times.

Mary Lee said...

I will try to keep his admonition in my ear, "begin afresh, afresh, afresh."
(Thank you for this site, too -- how did I not know it???)

Kay said...

I love the mix of hope and grief in this poem. Thank you for sharing it.