Black spring! Pick up your pen, and weeping,

Of February, in sobs and ink,

Write poems, while the slush in thunder

Is burning in the black of spring.

Through clanking wheels, through church bells ringing

A hired cab will take you where

The town has ended, where the showers

Are louder still than ink and tears.

Where rooks, like charred pears, from the branches

In thousands break away, and sweep

Into the melting snow, instilling

Dry sadness into eyes that weep.

Beneath—the earth is black in puddles,

The wind with croaking screeches throbs,

And—the more randomly, the surer

Poems are forming out of sobs.