Snowdrops

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring --

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

Glück, Louise. "Snowdrops." Flora Poetica, ed. Sarah Maguire. London: Chatto & Windus, (c)2001, p. 11. Originally published in The Wild Iris, Carcarnet Press, 1992.