Alice Oswald - Apr 4, Iyengar All Levels

I’ve been saving this Oswald collection, “Weeds And Wild Flowers”, for Spring. Starting with the flowers.

Snowdrop

A pale and pining girl, head bowed, heart gnawed,

whose figure nods and shivers in a shawl

of fine white wool, has suddenly appeared

in the damp woods, as mild and mute as snowfall.

She may not last. She has no strength at all,

but stoops and shakes as if she'd stood all night

on one bare foot, confiding with the moonlight.

One among several hundred clear-eyed ghosts

who get up in the cold and blink and turn

into these trembling emblems of night frosts,

she brings her burnt heart with her in an urn

of ashes, which she opens to re-mourn,

having no other outlet to express

her wild-flower sense of wounded gentleness.

Yes, she's no more now than a drop of snow

on a green stem - her name is now her calling.

Her mind is just a frozen melting glow

of water swollen to the point of falling,

which maybe has no meaning. There's no telling.

But what a beauty, what a mighty power

of patience kept intact is now in flower.