in springtime
It takes an odd sort of mind to give the title ‘A Gallery of Pigeons’ to a slender volume of light verse, especially if it includes a poem called ‘A Tragedy’ which contains the word ‘plop’ (more than once). So it was with some surprise I found a passage I almost liked in Marzials’ aforementioned collection of poems:
The lords of state, and the thieving sparrows,
Have settled noisily back to town;
The girls with flowers and shrill calabrians
Drove in the distance, up and down.I cannot write, or read, or practise;
I sit and grumble and curse the May;
The lime’s one legion of smelling blossom,
And hides her windows over the way.