An open access publication of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Fall 2007

Spring’s So Sad, We Want to Know Why

Author
Molly McQuade
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Molly McQuade's poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including “The Paris Review,” “The American Scholar,” and “Poetry,” as well as in her book “Barbarism” (2000). A new collection of her poems will be published later this year. She has received fellowships and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the National Council of Teachers of English, among others. She has also written a collection of essays about poetry, “Stealing Glimpses” (1999), and edited “By Herself” (2000), an anthology of essays about poetry.

Spring’s So Sad, We Want to Know Why


Spring’s so sad, we want to know why–
is it the mist that slips us from our baths
with memory of warmth never to be ours?

Beautiful isn’t enough, she says,
face floating near a simple oval bowl
flowered beyond whatever we can know,

and likely to outstay the ones who do.
Cornered, somehow, by the bowl, we stare
and wonder how complete we can become,

slipped from likeness on a night of spring,
let alone into a pause of stars,
mass and smallness merging everywhere,

leaving us to sulk and sink in self.
Sweet and simple in its lonesome trust,
spring will keep us simple till we pass.