Amo, amas, amat

' .............. the German word for snowdrop is Schneeglöckchen, and the French perce-neige. In Spanish, incidentally, you can call it both campanilla de las nieves and narciso de las nieves.'

I love snowdrops and the sight of clumps of fragile, glistening heads cheered me up when I got out the car tonight in pouring, ceaseless rain.
I didn't particularly like Latin at school, the never ending declining of verbs, but it has given me the knowledge that the plural of snowdrops is Galanthi, and also probably an appreciation of language.

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.
Louise Gluck