Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, May 15th, 2004.

Today's poem is another in honor of that fast-fleeting reality, Spring. It's by Edna St. Vincent Malay, and it's titled, Simply but Appropriately, Spring.

I read it once, say a few words, and then read it a second time. Here is Spring.

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 underground 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.

This is a departure from the typical odes to spring and even to the month of April, which is frequently phrased in song and poetry,

T.S. Eliot, perhaps being the great exception.

And here, Edna St. Vincent Millay, who acknowledges the outward trappings of spring,

but once more.

She demands a justification.

Why do you keep coming back, April?

There's something going on in the life and the heart of the speaker here

that makes them refuse to be satisfied or consoled by the beauties of Spring

or even what Spring intimates about reality, that death is not ultimate, that decay is not final.

I know what I know.

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