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Starlings in Winter

How do we respond to the seasons?   

How can we write creatively about this? 

Photo by Chris Bosak
A European Starling in winter plumage perches on an old sunflower stalk, Dec. 2014.

Starlings in Winter 

by Mary Oliver 

 

Chunky and noisy, 

but with stars in their black feathers, 

they spring from the telephone wire 

and instantly 

they are acrobats 

in the freezing wind. 

And now, in the theater of air, 

they swing over buildings, 

dipping and rising; 

they float like one stippled star 

that opens, 

becomes for a moment fragmented, 

then closes again; 

and you watch 

and you try 

but you simply can't imagine 

how they do it 

with no articulated instruction, no pause, 

only the silent confirmation 

that they are this notable thing, 

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin 

over and over again, 

full of gorgeous life. 

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us, 

even in the leafless winter, 

even in the ashy city. 

I am thinking now 

of grief, and of getting past it; 

I feel my boots 

trying to leave the ground, 

I feel my heart 

pumping hard. I want 

to think again of dangerous and noble things. 

I want to be light and frolicsome. 

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, 

as though I had wings. 

From:  

 Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays  

Copyright ©:  

 Mary Oliver 

Starlings in Winter ~ Mary Oliver 

It is spring again by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

IT IS SPRING AGAIN by Faiz Ahmed Faiz 

 

It is spring, And the ledger is opened again. 

From the abyss where they were frozen, 

those days suddenly return, those days 

that passed away from your lips, that died 

with all our kisses, unaccounted. 

The roses return: they are your fragrance; 

they are the blood of your lovers. 

Sorrow returns. I go through my pain 

and the agony of friends still lost in the memory 

of moon-silver arms, the caresses of vanished women. 

I go through page after page. There are no answers, 

and spring has come once again asking 

the same questions, reopening account after account. 

 

Faiz ahmed faiz poetry in urdu | Famous urdu nazam on spring | Faiz ahmad faiz shayari on bahar 

Monsoon Poem by Tishani Doshi

Monsoon Poem 

Listen to Tishani Doshi read her poem here 

 

BY TISHANI DOSHI 

Because this is a monsoon poem 

expect to find the words jasmine, 

palmyra, Kuruntokai, red; mangoes 

in reference to trees or breasts; paddy 

fields, peacocks, Kurinji flowers, 

flutes; lotus buds guarding love’s 

furtive routes. Expect to hear a lot 

about erotic consummation inferred 

by laburnum gyrations and bamboo 

syncopations. Listen to the racket 

of wide-mouthed frogs and bent- 

legged prawns going about their 

business of mating while rain falls 

and falls on tiled roofs and verandas, 

courtyards, pagodas. Because such 

a big part of you seeks to understand 

this kind of rain — so unlike your cold 

rain, austere rain, get-me-the-hell- 

out-of-here rain. Rain that can’t fathom 

how to liberate camphor from the vaults 

of the earth. Let me tell you how little 

is written of mud, how it sneaks up 

like a sleek-gilled vandal to catch hold 

of your ankles. Or about the restorative 

properties of mosquito blood, dappled 

and fried against the wires of a bug-zapping 

paddle. So much of monsoon is to do 

with being overcome — not from longing 

as you might think, but from the sky’s 

steady bludgeoning, until every leaf 

on every unremembered tree gleams 

in the abyss of postcoital bliss. 

Come. Now sip on your masala tea, 

put your lips to the sweet, spicy skin 

of it. There’s more to see — notice 

the dogs who’ve been fucking on the beach, 

locked in embrace like an elongated Anubis, 

the crabs scavenging the flesh of a dopey- 

eyed ponyfish, the entire delirious coast 

with its philtra of beach and saturnine 

clouds arched backwards in disbelief. 

And the mayflies who swarm in November 

with all their ephemeral grandeur to die 

in millions at the behest of light, the geckos 

stationed on living room walls, cramming 

fistfuls of wings in their maws. Notice 

how hardly anyone mentions the word 

death, even though the fridge leaks 

and the sheets have been damp for weeks. 

And in this helter-skelter multitude 

of gray-greenness, notice how even the rain 

begins to feel fatigued. The roads and sewers 

have nowhere to go, and like old-fashioned pursuers 

they wander and spill their babbling hearts 

to electrical poles and creatures with ears. 

And what happens later, you might ask, 

after we’ve moved to a place of shelter, 

when the cracks in the earth have reappeared? 

We dream of wet, of course, of being submerged 

in millet stalks, of webbed toes and stalled 

clocks and eels in the mouth of a heron. 

We forget how unforgivably those old poems 

led us to believe that men were mountains, 

that the beautiful could never remain 

heartbroken, that when the rains arrive 

we should be delighted to be taken 

in drowning, in devotion. 

The Summer Day

The Summer Day 

Who made the world? 
Who made the swan, and the black bear? 
Who made the grasshopper? 
This grasshopper, I mean— 
the one who has flung herself out of the grass, 
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, 
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— 
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. 
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. 
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. 
I don't know exactly what a prayer is. 
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, 
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, 
which is what I have been doing all day. 
Tell me, what else should I have done? 
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? 
Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life? 

—Mary Oliver 

 

To Autumn by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 

Conspiring with him how to load and bless 

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; 

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, 

And still more, later flowers for the bees, 

Until they think warm days will never cease, 

      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. 

 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, 

   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: 

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 

   Steady thy laden head across a brook; 

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, 

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. 

 

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? 

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— 

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; 

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft 

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; 

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 

Spring by Edna St Vincent Millay

Spring 

BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY 

To what purpose, April, do you return again?  

Beauty is not enough.  

You can no longer quiet me with the redness  

Of little leaves opening stickily.  

I know what I know.  

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe  

The spikes of the crocus.  

The smell of the earth is good.  

It is apparent that there is no death.  

But what does that signify?  

Not only under ground are the brains of men  

Eaten by maggots.  

Life in itself  

Is nothing,  

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.  

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,  

April  

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.  

 

Edna St.Vincent Millay - Spring (audio with text) 

The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden numbers amongst Frances Hodgson Burnett’s most famous works. Since it was first published in 1911, it has warmed the hearts of readers for over a hundred years. It continues to be a true classic of English children’s literature and is a story rich in the wonderful whimsy of childhood.  

The timeless story tells the tale of Mary Lennox, a sickly girl who is left orphaned and alone when an outbreak of cholera kills her parents and the staff of their home in India. She eventually ends up in Yorkshire with her uncle Archibald Craven and becomes inspired by the curious story of a nearby ‘secret garden’ she hears from a neighbour. This childhood classic is illustrated with ethereal and charming illustrations by Charles Robinson, brother of Thomas Robinson and W. Heath Robinson. 

Read an extract from the story below. 

An extract from The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden – An Extract from Chapter IX  

THE STRANGEST HOUSE ANY ONE EVER LIVED 

IT was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses, which were so thick that they were matted together. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen a great many roses in India. All the ground was covered with grass of a wintry brown, and out of it grew clumps of bushes which were surely rose-bushes if they were alive. There were numbers of standard roses which had so spread their branches that they were like little trees. There were other trees in the garden, and one of the things which made the place look strangest and loveliest was that climbing roses had run all over them and swung down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains, and here and there they had caught at each other or at a far-reaching branch and had crept from one tree to another and made lovely bridges of themselves. ‘l’ here were neither leaves nor roses on them now, and Mary did not know whether they were dead or alive, but their thin grey or brown branches and sprays looked like a sort of hazy mantle spreading over everything, walls, and trees, and even brown grass, where they had fallen from their fastenings and run along the ground. It was this hazy tangle from tree to tree which made it all look so mysterious. Mary had thought it must be different from other gardens which had not been left all by themselves so long; and indeed it was different from any other place she had ever seen in her life. 

“How still it is” she whispered. “How still” 

Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin, who had flown to his tree-top, was still as all the rest. He did not even flutter his wings; he sat without stirring, and looked at Mary. 

“No wonder it is still,” she whispered again. “I am the first person who has spoken in here for ten years.” 

She moved away from the door, stepping as softly as if she were afraid of awakening some one. She was glad that there was grass under her feet and that her steps made no sounds. She walked under one of the fairy-like grey arches between the trees and looked up at the sprays and tendrils which formed them. 

“I wonder if they are all quite dead,” she said. “Is it all a quite dead garden f I wish it wasn’t.” 

If she had been Ben Weatherstaff she could have told whether the wood was alive by looking at it, but she could only see that there were only grey or brown sprays and branches and none showed any signs of even a tiny leaf-bud anywhere. 

But she was inside the wonderful garden and she could come through the door under the ivy any time, and she felt as if she had found a world all her own. 

The sun was shining inside the four walls and the high arch of blue sky over this particular piece of Misselthwaite seemed even more brilliant and soft than it was over the moor. The robin flew down from his tree-top and hopped about or flew after her from one bush to another. He chirped a good deal and had a very busy air, as if he were showing her things. Everything was strange and silent and she seemed to be hundreds of miles away from any one, but somehow she did not feel lonely at all. All that troubled her was her wish that she knew whether all the roses were dead, or if perhaps some of them had lived and might put out leaves and buds as the weather got warmer. She did not want it to be a quite dead garden. If it were a quite alive garden, how wonderful it would be, and what thousands of roses would grow on every side! 

Her skipping-rope had hung over her arm when she came in, and after she had walked about for a while she thought she would skip round the whole garden, stopping when she wanted to look at things. There seemed to have been grass paths here and there, and in one or two comers there were alcoves of evergreen with stone seats or tall moss-covered flower urns in them. 

As she came near the second of these alcoves she stopped skipping. There had once been a flower-bed in it, and she thought she saw something sticking out of the black earth-some sharp little pale green points. She remembered what Ben Weatherstaff had said and she knelt down to look at them. 

“Yes, they are tiny growing things and they might be crocuses or snowdrops or daffodils,” she whispered. 

She bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of the damp earth. She liked it very much. 

“Perhaps there are some other ones coming up in other places,” she said. “I will go all over the garden and look.” 

She did not skip, but walked. She went slowly and kept her eyes on the ground. She looked in the old border beds and among the grass, and after she had gone round, trying to miss nothing, she had found ever so many more sharp, pale green points, and she had become quite excited again. 

“It isn’t a quite dead garden,” she cried out softly to herself. “Even if the roses are dead, there are other things alive.” 

She did not know anything about gardening, but the grass seemed so thick in some of the places where the green points were pushing their way through that she thought they did not seem to have room enough to grow. She searched about until she found a rather sharp piece of wood and knelt down and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until she made nice little clear places around them. 

“Now they look as if they could breathe,” she said, after she had finished with the first ones. “I am going to do ever so many more. do all I can see. If I haven’t time today I can come tomorrow.” 

She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself so immensely that she was led on from bed to bed and into the grass under the trees. The exercise made her so warm that she first threw her coat off, and then her hat, and without knowing it she was smiling down on to the grass and the pale green points all the time. 

The robin was tremendously busy. He was very much pleased to see gardening begun on his own estate. He had often wondered at Ben Weatherstaff. Where gardening is done all sorts of delightful things to eat are turned up with the soil. Now here was this new kind of creature who was not half Ben’s size and yet had had the sense to come into his garden and begin at once. 

Mistress Mary worked in her garden until it was time to go to her midday dinner. In fact, she was rather late in remembering, and when she put on her coat and hat, and picked up her skipping-rope, she could not believe that she had been working two or three hours. She had been actually happy all the time; and dozens and dozens of the tiny, pale green points were to be seen in cleared places, looking twice as cheerful as they had looked before when the grass and weeds had been smothering them. 

“I shall come back this afternoon,” she said, look­ing all round at her new kingdom, and speaking to the trees and the rose-bushes as if they heard her. Then she ran lightly across the grass, pushed open the slow old door and slipped through 1t under the ivy. She had such red cheeks and such bright eyes and ate such a dinner that Martha was de­lighted.  

 

From <https://www.pookpress.co.uk/the-secret-garden-extract/>