Louise Glück died a few days ago. When she won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I was surprised and pleased.
I returned to “Snowdrops” when trying to heal my heart:
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 earliest spring–afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joyin the raw wind of the new world.