VV(11): April

[Dave Monroe]

So, anyway, on with the ramble, starting with ...

"Profane, sweating in April's heat" (V., Ch. 8, Sec. i, p. 213)

Why is April, as T.S. Eliot writes (The Waste-Land), "the cruelest
month"?  "April is Taurus is green creative energy," an offlist (I mean,
entirely offlist) friend notes, "the first spark of actuality from the
potentiality of March/Aries.  It is the cruel pain of reawakening, birth
and growth."  Okay, I guess I'll buy that.  Cf. Geoffrey Chaucer, of
course, the opening lines of the "General Prologue" to The Canterbury
Tales, "Whan that April with his shoures soote/ The droughte of March
hath perced to the roote."  But cf. also ...

"Two Tramps in Mud Time," by Robert Frost

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

Not to mention ...

"Spring," by Edna St. Vincent Millay ...

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redress of little leaves opening
stickily.
I know what I know.
The Sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself
Is nothing
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs,
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

"The sun is hot on my neck," "Comes like an idiot, babbling," and much
profane, not to mention Profane, in between.  Hm ....

http://www.riverdeep.net/riverdeep_today/news_2000/april/front.140400.april.html

To give credit where credit's due.  And there'll be more on that
particular April, 1956, of course, when we get to Section iv of Chapter
8 (see p. 225) ...