I've apparently missed the important fact that winter has ended. In fact, it looks like spring has been around for about a week now. Oops. My bad. (I guess this explains why so many schools are having spring break right now. My own break doesn't begin until April 2, which may explain why my sense of the seasons is a bit off.) However, the weather felt nicely springish this weekend, which wasn't the case last weekend. Today I took the Q into Manhattan and walked around Union Square (see photo from earlier today, General Washington waving "see ya" to General Howe), and then down Broadway to Canal Street. Shorts weather again! Wahoo!! To commemorate this transformation, here is a spring poem by Wallace Stevens ("The Sun This March"), in which the speaker observes the change of seasons and wonders whether such a transformation might occur within himself. Indeed: I feel your pain, buddy! Away Siberian wintry frost, and give me the warmth of spring!
The exceeding brightness of this early sun
Makes me conceive how dark I have become,
And re-illuminates things that used to turn
To gold in broadest blue, and be a part
Of a turning spirit in an earlier self.
That, too, returns from out the winter's air,
Like an hallucination come to daze
The corner of the eye. Our element,
Cold is our element and winter's air
Brings voices as of lions coming down.
Oh! Rabbi, rabbi, fend my soul for me
And true savant of this dark nature be.