‘The Four Seasons’: A Poem by Daniel Howard

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The Four Seasons

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Spring

I
Amidst the cloudless sky and crimson dawn
Comes bursting forth the bluebird’s orange breast,
Whose shadow dances o’er the dewy lawn
On having found last February’s nest;
There he releases from his swollen chest
A song to which the jay, the wren, the dove
Supply the chorus, rousing thus from rest
The mammals that had long been dreaming of
His lady bluebird warbling back ‘my love, my love’.

II
As fair to lookers-on as she is fragile,
A fawn hides in the grass, her legs half-bent,
But soon her lean and gentle limbs are agile,
And let her march along in merriment;
Yet mother deer is anxious to prevent
Her daughter doe, whose skin she licks and dries,
From giving off too sweet a new-born scent,
Experience long having made her wise
To sets of mesmerised and all-admiring eyes.

III
Be not afraid as yet, for Nature loans
An hour-long sense of empathy and care,
When moss will blanket o’er unburied bones
To save the young ones from a needless scare;
For there is something in the springtime air
That briefly makes each growling beast grow mild,
Abundance will incline hard hearts to spare
One moment for all those who smile and smiled
While looking down upon their small defenceless child.

IV
And as the hours of sunlight slowly lengthen,
The rivers and the weeks roll swiftly on,
Warm winds allow the vocal chords to strengthen
As tufts of down fall downwards to the lawn.
Their rodent-hunting parents having gone,
The fox cubs feel about for new sensations:
Leaving the den to which they were withdrawn,
Each lightly bears the lofty expectations
Of several thousand past and future generations.

V
The robin’s feathers have begun to fledge,
And in his flaming breast burns the desire
To walk beyond the branch’s wind-blown edge,
And for adventure’s sake he might expire,
But strength of will now lifts him ever higher,
And as I watch him fly upon each wing,
Within my thoughts beginning to retire,
I breathe a heavy sigh through which I sing
Not of what Spring had brought, but what she could not bring.

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Summer

VI
Within a village few now call their home
Stands an abandoned shed of broken stone
To which the swallow-of-the-barn will roam
To make a little kingdom of his own;
There thrusting out his breast from his new throne,
He sings away in hope his special one
Will start to fly, as she before had flown,
To that abode which other creatures shun,
To hide with him from Summer’s ever-watchful sun.

VII
In time I spot a long-tailed spotted kestrel,
Now nestled in the hollow of a bole,
Tilting his head on hearing the orchestral
Chorus of crickets echoing through that hole;
There gazing out on the abundant whole,
The waterways and reeds of his locale
Through which there wanders yet another vole,
Shall he not think, as others like him shall,
That Summer’s spoils are endless like this long canal?

VIII
For midst the plenty that the season brings,
Each evening offering fresh beds of hay,
Amidst the triumph of all living things
That reproduce themselves each passing day,
And midst this paradise of pomp and play,
The hunger and the fear that used to last
For weeks on end have long been cast away,
And all the trials through which each bloodline passed
Become the myths of a forgotten ancient past.

IX
He who associates the sound of June
With choughs, the sparrow or the sanderling,
And links the smell of Summer’s afternoon
With fresh-cut grass of bright-green colouring,
Has never heard the trickling of a spring
While thirsting underneath the sunshine’s glitter,
Nor ever felt the ice-cube’s pleasant sting,
Yet I who am at present the emitter
Of such a flowing spring taste nought that is not bitter.

X
For even as the welcome warmth of heat
That hitherto had caused the trees to soar
Enflames the fields of barley and of wheat,
And burns the dried-out forest to the floor;
The spark of love that warmed me once before,
And kindled tender feelings of compassion,
Enflames, engulfs, consumes me to my core;
And of the veins that poured hot-blooded passion
Is left this remnant of myself, worn out and ashen.

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Autumn

XI
As shorter days invisibly diminish
The time of play beneath the evening light,
Making the carefree games of children finish
After the sudden onset of the night;
The leaves and foliage of the woods unite
In taking on the colours of the sun,
Affording thus a face both warm and bright
To those the aging star was forced to shun
For want of energy once more to kiss each one.

XII
A gentle zephyr blows upon the shoot
To which a group of purple grapes was bound,
Their juices staining every vine and root
That breaks their hastened fall towards the ground;
And now the moths and beetles gather round
To feed upon the over-ripened waste:
Look how they swim or seem to have been drowned
In wine that hitherto had been encased—
Is Autumn not of Summer the sweet aftertaste?

XIII
The floor is strewn with fallen leaves and twigs
Beneath which dormice, frogs and hedgehogs creep,
While red-breast squirrels gather nuts and figs
On which to feed before their weeks-long sleep;
And he who in the caverns ventures deep
Finds butterflies and flocks of bats there too,
Suspended from the rock whose ceilings seep;
How many more would sleep the winter through
If they were now aware of all that must ensue?

XIV
As one more leaf along the water drifts,
Its shadow darkening the riverbed,
The willow warblers, cuckoos and the swifts
Fly further from the place where they had bred;
And I must lead, as I have often led,
Their long migration to another nest,
For I am as a swallow who can tread
The North and South, the East and then the West
While never leaving home, for Earth’s my place of rest.

XV
But as you bid adieu, god bless, good day,
The heart bleeds tears of sorrowful remorse;
The sight of you whose image fades away
Changes the mind as fast as winds change course.
But life is as a stream whose onward force
Nor man nor beast can bend to his command,
And from it springs my sadness’ hidden source:
Time marches on, will not come to a stand,
But passes like a current through the clasping hand.

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Winter

XVI
The wind that carried birdsong at its will
Retains its breath, and every bird its call;
The water that was flowing down the hill
Clings to the rocks o’er which it used to crawl,
And silent are the flakes of snow that fall
Throughout the mute, monotonous atmosphere,
No longer is there any sound at all
Except for gentle whispers in my ear
From thoughts reflecting back upon the passing year.

XVII
How many shiver o’er a makeshift fire
To heat numb fingers or a frost-nipped nose;
To satisfy the body’s great desire
To feel the blood come circling through the toes?
Yet warmest is that fire to which one goes
Once more to feel as one before had felt,
To let the focus of one’s mind repose
Upon the flames, and there long having dwelt,
Within the fervent thoughts of times long past to melt.

XVIII
But morning will in time renew the tear
The mind secretes on waking to its pains;
The eyes will gaze on objects far and near,
But all is white upon the streams and plains,
As if the world were an old man whose veins
Are clotting up and slowly freezing o’er,
Whose fate is sealed, and all that now remains
Is to endure the thought of how much more
That suffering can last which makes the heart feel sore.

XIX
The barren, snow-capped branches thirst for sap,
But their great tree is rotten to the root,
Each one-by-one begins to break and snap
For want of strength to bear some future fruit.
Of an ancestral tree one living shoot
Lingers as yet in this new-orphaned roe,
Who in a world now rendered destitute
Sought the weaned udders of her mother doe,
But knows not where she went, nor where herself must go.

XX
Look how the famished nine-month-old gazelle
Fruitlessly braves the brisk November cold,
And in each field on which the snowdrops fell
Searches for meadows strewn with marigold,
Which died away ere frost had taken hold.
With none to tell her, how can she conceive
Of winter’s end, and thereby be consoled?
Or being told, yet how can I believe
That I will feel again the sun for which I grieve?

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Daniel Joseph Howard studied law in his native Ireland, earned an MA in philosophy at King’s College London and worked for the European Commission. He is currently a pensionnaire étranger at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, as well as a Teaching Fellow and PhD candidate in the United States.