Snowdrops

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know

what despair is; then

winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,

earth suppressing me. I didn't expect

to waken again, to feel

in damp earth my body

able to respond again, remembering

after so long how to open again

in the cold light

of early spring--

afraid, yes, but among you again

crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

~ Louise Glück, The Wild Iris (London: Carcanet, 1992), p 6