Rooks, building high this year, aloft,
Flap from their airy, twig-perched palaces
Coarse, comic, voices - cawing in the cold,
Like pealing of cracked bells; these country fallacies
Say when their nests are high, the sun will hold
A honeyed glaze on sky farm field and croft:

So, let this moaning wind in telephone wires,
For want of choices, on this bitter day
When shadows creep back into the high wood -
Et in arcadia ego – the wind’s sharp cry
Bearing winter’s scythe, grim, face hid by a hood,
Be changed to the joyful chord of springtime’s lyre;

For all who swore never to smile again
Are strangely happy that rooks should choose their mate
And make their ancient springtime parliaments -
I watch their circling, ever-restless state
Not looking back to see where last year went,
Now Candlemas fires have licked its wounds of pain.

And, high in their frail towers, the rooks can see,
Goddess has smiled on fields, her glowing eyes
Have warmed the broad horizons; it has begun -
Sounds of her voice, like blossom in the skies
Thawing barbed ice, making the rivers run
Bringing to life the sullen world, and me.