Wow, it's amazing how quickly April's rolled around. After a couple weeks of lovely, almost unseasonably warm weather, too, we ended up getting fooled with a snowstorm that blew in from the northeast.

I'd not been round for this year's apparently long, hard New England Winter, so found the storm refreshing. None of my friends or neighbors were happy to have to lace up their boots, to slip on their overcoats, to revert to the Winter Mind:

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

-Wallace Stevens

(Happy Eighth Poetry Month here! Hopefully happy continuation of Spring, as well.)

Domestic Archaeology.

The Frenchie, like me, has been slowly but surely sifting through the effects of the past couple generations left to him when his parents passed away. Recently, he found a notebook belong to his mother where she'd jotted down favorite lyrics, poems, etc. Interesting to look back on these things and not have the same attachments as I have going through my own mother's things:



If you click on the image, it'll take you to the flickr site where you can find something larger and easier to read.

Hiver

Hiver, vous n'êtes qu'un villain
Eté est plaisant et gentil
Eté revêt champs, bois et fleurs
De sa Livrée de verdure
Et de maintes autres couleurs
Mais vous, Hiver, vous êtes plein
de neige, vent, pluie et grésil.
Hiver, vous n'êtes qu'un villain...

-Charles D'Orléans

(Apologies for the somewhat rough and on the fly translation:)

Winter

Oh, awful, awful Winter,
Summer is pleasant and sweet
Summer dresses up fields, woods and flowers
In verdant finery
touched with so many other colors
But you, Winter, you are filled
with snow, wind, rain and hail.
Oh, awful, awful Winter.

Also found in my wanders that Debussy set this to music.