April 9, 2023 at Winterthur which is the legacy of Henry Francis du Pont, 1880-1969, American

 

Celebration

Denise Levertov, American born England, 1923-1997

from the posthumously published This Great Unknowing – Last Poems

 

Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green –
whether it’s ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes –
greener than ever before. And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for the blessing,
a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along
the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.

 

 

                            

 

Parade on Hammond Street, 1935, oil on canvas.  Allan Rohan Crite, 1910-2007, American.  The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC