Serving House: A Journal of Literary Arts
SHJ
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Poem
SHJ Issue 4
Fall 2011

The Month For Me Is April

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Translated from Danish by Thomas E. Kennedy

The month for  me is April!
Where the old landscape falls,
where the new saps from its root.
A bit of tumult’s heard to squall,
though best is hardly peace afoot,
but the waking of earth’s will!
 
The month for me is April,
because it  storms and drips and sweeps,
because it melts and smiles and grows,
because it spring’s secret keeps,
because its power overthrows,
from it blooms summer still.

 

—Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910): Norwegian poet, playwright, and Nobel Prize in Literature Laureate in 1903

“...we have been born here to witness and celebrate. We wonder at our purpose for living. Our purpose
is to perceive the fantastic. Why have a universe if there is no audience?” — Ray Bradbury