POEM MARCH 31ST. 2021

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DAFFODILS

 Heads skewered with grief 

Three Marys at the cross 

(Christ was wire and wax 

festooned on a dead tree) 


Guardians of the rock,

their emerald tapers touch 

the pale wick of the sun

 and perish before the rose

 bleeds on the solstice stone

 and the cornstalk unloads 

peace from hills of thorn


 Spindrifting blossoms

 from the gray comber of March

 thundering on the world, 

splash our rooms coldly with 

first grace of light, until 

the corn-tides throb, and fields 

drown in honey and fleeces


Shawled in radiance

 tissue of sun and snow 

three bowl-bound daffodils in the euclidian season 

when darkness equals light 

and the world's circle shudders

 down to one bleeding point 

Mary Mary and Mary triangle of grief. 


George Mackay Brown


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