Spring Is On Its Way

When I arrived at Fishers Green it was heaving so I went to the Longlands Hide area instead, had it to myself and captured the handsome male chaffinch above. Busy rat really is extra busy now, it's building a nest. I really enjoyed watching it collecting twigs and dead leaves and taking them underground. A pair of pied woodpeckers were drumming on the same tree trunk and in my extra pic of greylags over the Goosefield the willows are getting a reddish tinge, that's the tiny new buds. Spring is in the air. :)

I love today's poem "In Paris in a Loud Dark Winter" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti so much that I'm going to include it rather than link to it.

 "In Paris in a loud dark winter
                                 when the sun was something in Provence
when I came upon the poetry
                                 of Rene Char
     I saw Vaucluse again
                                  in a summer of sauterelles
   its fountains full of petals
                                 and its river thrown down
  through all the burnt places
                                 of that almond world
  and the fields full of silence
                                 though the crickets sang
              with their legs
                                 And in the poet’s plangent dream I saw
no Lorelei upon the Rhone
                               nor angels debarked at Marseilles
but couples going nude into the sad water
                                 in the profound lasciviousness of spring
   in an algebra of lyricism
                                 which I am still deciphering"

I've Googled Rene Char who was born in Vaucluse and found this quote. “In the darkness of our lives, there is not one place for Beauty. The whole place is for Beauty.”

The "summer of sauterelles" and "though the crickets sang with their legs" particularly appeals to me as I'm into photographing saltatorians. The "Lorelei upon the Rhone" is a bit confusing as that siren resides on a rock in the Rhine. For some reason our English master at school had us recite the poem in German even though we were not students of that language. I still remember this snippet.
 
"Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr gold'nes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar,
Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme,"

Not sure why the water is "sad" but I adore "in the profound lasciviousness of spring" it sums up the season perfectly.