Sunday 19 April 2015

Addendum: April


I am guessing that  the curious and lovely-sounding 'quiddify' here is a likening of 'quiddity' which would mean the 'essence' of the month.  Alice Oswald's endeared and magical take on April. 



April - Alice Oswald

The sheer grip and the push of it - growth gets
a footledge in the loosest stems, it takes
the litterings of weeds and clocks them round;
your eyeballs bud and alter and you can't
step twice in the same foot - I know a road,
the curve throws it one way and another;
somebody slipped the gears and bucketed slowly
into the hawthorns and his car took root
and in its bonnet now, amazing flowers
appear and fade and quiddify the month;
and us on bicycles - it was so fast
wheeling and turning we were lifted falling, 
our blue-sky jackets filling up like vowels...
and now we float in the fair blow of springtime,
kingfishers, each astonishing the other
to be a feathered nerve, to take the crack
between the river's excess and the sun's. 

*** 

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