O
Out of a bed of love
When that immortal hospital made one more move to soothe
The cureless counted body,
And ruin and his causes
Over the barbed and shooting sea assumed an army
And swept into our wounds and houses,
I climb to greet the war in which I have no heart but only
That one dark I owe my light,
Call for confessor and wiser mirror but there is none
To glow after the god stoning night
And I am struck as lonely as a holy marker by the sun.

No
Praise that the spring time is all
Gabriel and radiant shrubbery as the morning grows joyful
Out of the woebegone pyre
And the multitude’s sultry tear turns cool on the weeping wall,
My arising prodigal
Sun the father his quiver full of the infants of pure fire,
But blessed be hail and upheaval
That uncalm still it is sure alone to stand and sing
Alone in the husk of man’s home
And the mother and toppling house of the holy spring,
If only for a last time.

— DylanThomas ‘Holy Spring’

It is now mid-April, and spring is well underway. I heard the first bee of the year yesterday, as it hummed busily past my window, and leaves are rapidly greening the birch tree just outside.

In many ways it seems odd that nature is continuing as usual while we struggle with what is going on in the human world, but why would it be otherwise? Spring is nothing more than a continuation of the cycle of life and death, a cycle which very much includes the outbreak of new strains of disease. What is currently happening to human beings has been experienced by countless other species before and doubtless will do again. We are not special but just another part of the biological struggle to exist and propagate ourselves. Continue reading →