Today’s poem is by Gerry Moll (1900 – 1997), an Australian poet from Murtoa, in the Wimmera, who studied at Harvard University and then lived for many years in Oregon, USA. Moll was apparently a fine teacher of literature, and students who took his Shakespeare class in the 1920s still remembered him seven decades later.
\nOne cannot read this poem this week without thinking of the brave people of Iran.<\/p>\n
White Violets<\/em>
\nThis Spring the white violets
\nCame early and everywhere
\nGreet me with their white expectant faces.
\nFor years I’d kept them sternly in their places:
\nA rock-bowl here, a thin, neat border there.
\nThey’ve broken lines and every boundary
\nA gardener sets for such;
\nEven the lawn, still winter-brown, is a sea
\nFoamed over by them and the warming air,
\nFilled with their scent, proclaims their empery.
\nWhy did they come so early? Did they know
\nThat one was the way to still the hand
\nThat bestowed blessings on them with its touch?
\nAnd why such masses? Did they fear
\nShe might not see them with her pain-dimmed eyes,
\nOr, hastening on the way she had to go,
\nWould miss them at this turning of the year?
\nGrief to these questions asks for no replies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n