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Daffodils

By Alicia Ostriker b. 1937 Alicia Ostriker

—for David Lehman

Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
—William Wordsworth

Going to hell so many times tears it
Which explains poetry.
—Jack Spicer

The day the war against Iraq begins

I’m photographing the yellow daffodils

With their outstretched arms and ruffled cups

Blowing in the wind of Jesus Green

Edging the lush grassy moving river

Along with the swans and ducks

Under a soft March Cambridge sky

Embellishing the earth like a hand

Starting to illustrate a children’s book

Where people in light clothes come out

To play, to frisk and run about

With their lovers, friends, animals, and children

As down every stony back road of history

They’ve always done in the peaceful springs

—Which in a sense is also hell because

The daffodils do look as if they dance

And make some of us in the park want to dance

And breathe deeply and I know that

Being able to eat and incorporate beauty like this

I am privileged and by that token can

Taste pain, roll it on my tongue, it’s good

The cruel wars are good the stupidity is good,

The primates hiding in their caves are very good,

They do their best, which explains poetry.

What explains poetry is that life is hard

But better than the alternatives,

The no and the nothing. Look at this light

And color, a splash of brilliant yellow

Punctuating an emerald text, white swans

And mottled brown ducks floating quietly along

Whole and alive, like an untorn language

That lacks nothing, that excludes

Nothing. Period. Don’t you think

It is our business to defend it

Even the day our masters start a war?

To defend the day we see the daffodils?

"Daffodils" from No Heaven, by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, © 2005. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: No Heaven (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005)

ABOUT THIS POEM

Discover this poem’s context and related poetry, articles, and media.

Poet Alicia Ostriker b. 1937

POET’S REGION U.S., New England

Subjects War & Conflict, Social Commentaries

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Biography

Poet, critic, and activist Alicia Ostriker was born in 1937 in New York City. She earned degrees from Brandeis and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Twice a finalist for the National Book Award, Ostriker has published numerous volumes of poetry, including The Book of Seventy (2009), which received the Jewish National Book Award. Other books of poetry include No Heaven (2005); The Volcano Sequence (2002); Little Space (1998), . . .

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