The sun is hotter than the top ledge in a steam bath; <br />The ravine, crazed, is rampaging below. <br />Spring -- that corn-fed, husky milkmaid -- <br />Is busy at her chores with never a letup. <br /> <br />The snow is wasting (pernicious anemia -- <br />See those branching veinlets of impotent blue?) <br />Yet in the cowbarn life is burbling, steaming, <br />And the tines of pitchforks simply glow with health. <br /> <br />These days -- these days, and these nights also! <br />With eavesdrop thrumming its tattoos at noon, <br />With icicles (cachectic!) hanging on to gables, <br />And with the chattering of rills that never sleep! <br /> <br />All doors are flung open -- in stable and in cowbarn; <br />Pigeons peck at oats fallen in the snow; <br />And the culprit of all this and its life-begetter-- <br />The pile of manure -- is pungent with ozone.<br /><br />Boris Pasternak<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/march/
