Poem: The Trees, Philip Larkin


(used as the epigraph

in my novel The Eagle Tree)


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.


…….


from Philip Larkin’s The Collected Poems (Faber, 1993), reprinted by permission of the publisher, Faber & Faber Ltd.


Poem: The Trees, Philip Larkin was originally published on Ned Hayes

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Published on September 01, 2018 19:53
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