Misreading Housman

By Linda Pastan b. 1932 Linda Pastan

On this first day of spring, snow

covers the fruit trees, mingling improbably

with the new blossoms like identical twins

brought up in different hemispheres.

It is not what Housman meant

when he wrote of the cherry

hung with snow, though he also knew

how death can mistake the seasons,

and if he made it all sound pretty,

that was our misreading

in those high school classrooms

where, drunk on boredom, we had to recite

his poems. Now the weather is always looming

in the background, trying to become more

than merely scenery, and though today

it is telling us something

we don't want to hear, it is all

so unpredictable, so out of control

that we might as well be children again,

hearing the voices of thunder

like baritone uncles shouting

in the next room as we try to sleep,

or hearing the silence of snow falling

soft as a coverlet, even in springtime

whispering: relax, there is nothing

you can possibly do about any of this.

Linda Pastan, "Misreading Housman" from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998, published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 1998 by Linda Pastan. Reprinted with the permission of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Inc.

Source: Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1998)

Biography

Poet Linda Pastan was raised in New York City but has lived for most of her life in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. In her senior year at Radcliffe College, Pastan won the Mademoiselle poetry prize (Sylvia Plath was the runner-up). Immediately following graduation, however, she decided to give up writing poetry in order to concentrate on raising her family. After ten years at home, her husband urged her to . . .

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