Their greenness is a kind of grief.

After you read this Philip Larkin (1922-1985) poem, hear him recite it to you.

“The Trees”

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

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and my body is an endless eye

Today we see the world through the endless eye of Spanish poet and storyteller Gloria Fuertes (1918-1998)

“Now”

Now I will tell you
how the worms
I kept in an empty soap carton
and fed white mulberry leaves,
changed themselves without my help,
curling into scoops of color,
and how later I watched them
transform into butterflies,
and all this just because it was May
and because insects possess a bit of magic.

Then I’ll tell you
how Eloisa Muro,
fourth mistress of Cervantes,
was the author of Don Quixote.

For though I’m small, I know many things,
and my body is an endless eye
through which, unfortunately, I see everything.

translated by Brian Barker