Spring terror

This poem was included in my first poetry collection, Poetry After Auschwitz. Snowdrops are starting to emerge again in our garden, so this seemed a suitable time to dust it off.

Spring terror

Snowdrops revert to merely green
when snow subverts their herald’s role,
but thaw restores their callous poise
and sets in train an ebbing tide

which gathers speed like pressured steam
as each successive flower unfolds
and every longer day destroys
more of the darkness where we hide.

It quietly starts, and then it swells,
this growing distance from the shore –
and as my toes lose contact with

dissolving sand and broken shells,
I want to ask, beneath the roar,
has winter no more cold to give?