It’s April the First, and it’s Poetry Month

 

We are going to start Poetry Month this year with two very small very lovely early poems by the soulful and wonderful young Leonard from Montreal.

Here they are, from pp. 63 and 64 of A Spice Box of Earth, published in 1961 when he was 27 and I was 16:

FOR ANNE

With Annie gone,

whose eyes to compare

With the morning sun?

Not that I did compare,

But I do compare

Now that she’s gone.

SONG

I almost went to bed

without remembering

the four white violets

I put in the button-hole

of your green sweater

and how I kissed you then

and you kissed me

shy as though I’d

never been your lover

That’s all, two poems for you on the first day of the month of poetry.