Poetry
Spring Cleaning
ON April days the housewives rise to set their homes in order, And Spring puts on, while thrushes call,
Her daisy patterned overall With buttercups about the neck and scillas at the border.
While other people rub and scrub and polish up their brasses And clean their cans, and taps and knobs, She gilds the marigolds (or blobs), The buttercups and celandine that shimmer in the grasses.
She hangs on every hawthorn hedge her curtain's petalled laces, With curded cloud, when moms are new, She scours her ceiling bright and blue
And lays her mass of blossom down in secret woody places.
While other people sweep and wash and fuss and fret and fluster, If she should want to clean a combe, She takes her scented golden broom, And snatches from a hazel spray her catkin-tasselled duster' BARBARA EUPHAN TODD.
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