Spring

Green-shadowed people sit, or walk in rings, Their children finger the awakened grass, Calmly a cloud stands, calmly a bird sings, And, flashing like a dangled-looking glass, Sun lights the balls that bounce, the dogs that bark, The branch-arrested mist of leaf, and me, Threading my pursed-up way across the park, An indigestible sterility. Spring, of all seasons most gratuitous, Is fold of untaught flower, is race of water Is earth’s most multiple, excited daughter; And those she has least use for see her best, Their paths grown craven and circuitous, Their visions mountain-clear, their needs immodest.