This time of year a lot of "poets" are "inspired" to write a lot of really crappy poems about spring. It’s nice to know that a great poem can actually be written on the subject.
This is from Stephen Mitchell’s excellent translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Sonnets to Orpheus:
XXI
Spring has returned
The earth resembles
A little girl who has memorized
Many poems…
For all the trouble of her long learning,
She wins the prize
Her teacher was strict
We loved the white
In the old man’s beard and shaggy eyebrows
Now, whenever we ask about
The blue and the green
She knows, she knows
Earth
Overjoyed to be on vacation
Plays with the children
We long to catch up
Jubilant Earth
The happiest will win
What her teacher taught her
The numberless Things
And what lies hidden
In stem
And in deep difficult root
She sings, she sings
A Leak In The Safe 