T.S. Eliot on April

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding  
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing  
Memory and desire, stirring  
Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
First 4 lines

Chaucer on April

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,

And smale fowles maken melodye

That slepen al the night with open ye

(So priketh hem nature in hir corages):

Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,

To ferne halwes couthe in sondry londes;

And specially from every shires ende

Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende

The holy blisful martir for to seke

That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

First 18 lines

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340(?)–1400)

Sonnet

Sonnet
by Billy Collins

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played

and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blowout the lights, and come at last to bed.

 "Sonnet" by Billy Collins from Sailing Alone Around the Room. © Random House, 2002.

Wear

Wear
by Philip Booth


I hate how things wear out.


Not elbows, collars, cuffs;
they fit me, lightly frayed.


Not belts or paint or rust,
not routine maintenance.


On my own hook I cope
with surfaces: with all


that rubs away, flakes off, or fades
on schedule. What eats at me


is what wears from the in-
side out: bearings, couplings,


universal joints, old
differentials, rings,


and points: frictions hidden
in such dark they build


to heat before they come
to light. What gets to me


is how valves wear, the slow
leak in old circuitry,


the hairline fracture under
stress. With all my heart

I hate pumps losing prime,
immeasurable over-


loads, ungauged fatigue
in linkages. I hate


myself for wasting time
on hate: the cost of speed


came with the bill of sale,
the rest was never under


warranty. Five years
ago I turned in every


year; this year I rebuild
rebuilt parts. What hurts


is how blind tired I get. 


"Wear" by Philip Booth, from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999. © Viking, 1999.