A song, then, to echo the spring morning we’ve just had, perhaps with a sadder slant in the sweet care of Judy Garland. A few fanciful spring images too, for the season now at hand – now, after so much waiting and wanting – now, after this kind winter, now… yes, now. A word that lends spring its intrinsic urgency: now.
Last night when we were young
Love was a star, a song unsung
Life was so new, so real so right
Ages ago last night
Oh spring, please be as gay as I remember you being in my youth. Please do not have spent all your lilac blooms in last year’s wayward autumn warmth. Please do not rush, and please somehow make haste. Please… please… another lovely word, perhaps even lovelier than now: please. The want of spring; the regret of winter.
Today the world is old
You flew away and time grew cold
Where is that star that shone so bright
Ages ago last night?
Spring nights call for music like this, something that rings slightly of Savannah, maybe by Harold Arlen, something that speaks to the heart, and to the longing of the earth when she breaks open in an irreversible state of thaw. Release. And relief. I remember walking beneath a small stretch of flowering cherry trees in Boston one night, long before Andy, long before I even knew or loved myself, and spring felt like the only source of solace for an early twenty-something on the cusp of life.
To think that spring had depended
On merely this: a look, a kiss
To think that something so splendid
Could slip away in one little daybreak
Such tenderness at the budding youth of the season carries a risk and a warning. There is still time for snowstorms and spring freezes; we might yet lose all the precarious flowers-in-bud, and the world is vicious in how unrelenting such acts can come upon our course. Winter may be harsh, but it would never pretend otherwise; spring is more cruel in what it can take away with its promise of hope, and promise of… promise.
So now, let’s reminisce
And recollect the sighs and the kisses
The arms that clung
When we were young last night
