April Weather [poem by John Shaw Neilson]

[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).]

April Weather

How long — but, nay! it is not long
Since we two chirped together:
And, oh! we spoke unwittingly,
And it was April weather.

The sun did seem as one well past
All jealousy and fretting,
And as an old man lonesome smiles
Remembering and forgetting.

The cool wind waited patiently
For all the sun’s delaying,
And, like a fallen player, spoke
The bitterness of playing.

Tears were upon us; and the pain
Of all the poor misplanted:
Of famine old and merciless
And children disenchanted.

The sky came up with chronicles
Beyond the blue air blowing:
The bitterness of Love lived on,
And Love himself was going.

How long — but, nay! it is not long
Since we two chirped together . . .
And, oh! we spoke unwittingly:
And it was April weather.

Source:
John Shaw Neilson (editor: R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Publishing Company, 1934 [May 1949 reprint], page 123