Spring And All

8 Ramadhan, 1441

A week into fasting month and May begins. However, Spring is not in the air. It never is here. But somewhere it will be, appearances to the contrary.

This past April really has been the cruellest month, but I'm thinking of poet and doctor William Carlos Williams who, having dealt with the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 in his typically low-key manner (up to 60 house calls a day at its height, and almost everyone in his immediate family catching the virus) went on to a typically low-key salute and invocation of Spring and All. Like LOA's President, Max Rudin, I'd never quite made the connection between the grim epidemic and WCW's contagious hospital, but now I have I won't readily forget it.

We've been here before. We're always re-treading old ground. At our best we learn to recognise and negotiate the terrain with some small assurance of the inevitable re-birth.