Hubert's Poetry Corner: The Trees - Philip Larkin

After a few days of damp, cold and blustery weather the new Spring feels like it's really getting a grip on things here in the West Midlands. I was looking at the countryside through the window of a bus today and one marvellously bright tree, newly in leaf, reminded me of the closing words of a poem by Philip Larkin. It's not impossible that I'll go out hunting tonight but, right now, a session flat on my back with a Patrick O'Brian novel, my pipe and the odd glass of wine seems rather more likely.


The Trees - Philip Larkin

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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Tags: phillip larkin, poetry