Who Knew?

 Who knew there's a poem for all of us who have birthdays this month?

APRIL BIRTHDAY

When your birthday brings the world under your window

And the song-thrush sings wet-throated in the dew

And aconite and primrose are unsticking the wrappers

Of the package that has come today for you

Lambs bounce out and stand astonished

Puss willow pushes among the bare branches

Sooty hawthorns shiver into emerald

And a new air

Nuzzles the sugary

Buds of the chestnut. A groundswell and a stir

Billows the silvered 

Violet silks

Of the south  - a tenderness

Lifting through all the

Gently-breasted

Counties of England

When the swallow snips the string that holds the world in

And the ring-dove claps and nearly loops the loop

You just can't count everything that follows in the tumble

Like a whole circus tumbling through a hoop

Grass in a mesh of all flowers floundering

Sizzling leaves and blossoms bombing

Nestling hissing and groggy-legged insects

And the trees

Stagger, they stronger

Brace their boles and biceps under

The load of gift. And the hills float

Light as a bubble glass

On the smoke blue evening

And rabbits are bobbing everywhere, and a thrush

Rings coolly in a far corner. A shiver of green

Strokes the darkening slope as the land

Begins her labour.

TED HUGHES (1930 - 1998)