Spring

Spring comes when Spring comes never more

Over the barren ploughland of our years

But we, who always feared the Spring before

Have found at last an ending to all fears.



When God with knotted winds across the sky

Scourges the white or weeping clouds of rain;

Or from the bed in which it loved to lie

Drags by its emerald hair the sleeping grain;



Convulses in an agony of birth

Trees that are old and only long to die;

Or with a ‘pox of flowers’ infects the earth:

These things are like a rainbow in the sky.



If God ordained all this, he did ordain

That we who wanted love should be alone.

We are some kindred miracle of pain.

We asked for bread. He gave us precious stone.



Copyright © by Quentin Crisp and Phillip Ward, from Dusty Answers (forthcoming), Mr. Crisp's final book. All rights reserved.

Reproduced here by Mr Ward's kind permission.
See THE QUENTIN CRISP ARCHIVES