national poetry month, day four: jan zwicky

You Must Believe In Spring

Because it is the garden. What is left to us.
Because silence is not silence without sound.
Because you have let the out, and then in, and then out, and then in, and then
     out, and then in, and then out, and then in, and then out, and then in,
     enough.
Because otherwise their precision at the blue line would mean nothing.
Because otherwise death would mean nothing.
Because the light says so.
Because a human being can gladly eat only so much cabbage.
Because the pockets of your overcoat need mending.
Because it's easy not to.
Because your sweaters smell.
Because Gregory of Nazianzen said geometry has no place in mourning, by which
     he meant despair presumes too much.
Because it ain't over 'til it's over. - Hank Aaron, Jackie Robinson. Satchel Paige.
Because Kant was wrong, and Socrates, Descartes and all the rest. Because it is
     the body thinking and Newt Gingrich would like you not to.
Because the signs are not wrong: you are here.
Because I love you. Or you love someone. Because someone is loved.
Because under the sun, everything is new.
Because the wet snow in the trees is clotted light.
Because in 1841 it took six cords of wood to get through winter in one room at
     Harvard and two-thirds of Maine used to be open country as a result.
Because sleeping is not death.
Because although an asshole was practising his Elvis Presley imitation, full
     voice, Sunday morning, April 23rd at Spectacle Lake Provincial Park, the
     winter wren simply moved 200 yards down the trail.
Because the wren's voice is moss in sunlight, because it is a stream in sunlight
     over stones.
Because Beethoven titled the sonata.
I mean: would Bill Evans and Frank Morgan lie to you?
Because even sorrow has a source.
For, though it cannot fly, the heart is an excellent clamberer.

Zwicky, Jan. "You Must Believe in Spring" Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets. Queyras, Sina, ed. New York: Persea Books, 2005. 232-3.