Sonnet: Daffodils

March 21, 2013

Wordsworth really loved daffodils. He said they were flashers.
Certainly they must be the most exhibitionistic flowers
there are.
trumpeting their presence in yellow—by far the most
visible colour.
I grant that after a long hard winter
it’s warming to see snow-drops and crocuses in that iron earth
and the very first daffodils (what a cliché) seem a
resurrection,
something it even seems appropriate to make a fuss about.
They look so perfect, though a bit self-conscious.

After a week or two, however, when Spring is established,
and everywhere you look there are oceans of daffodils
as arrogant as pop stars, they begin to seem ordinary.
You take them for granted. Like a love affair fading
they shrivel and go crinkly, papery and tired.
The Spring too (teenagers witness) has its own kind of
boredom.

“Sonnet: Daffodils” by Gavin Ewart, from Or Where a Young Penguin Lies Screaming. © Little Hampton books, 1978.