The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf

Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and spread,

Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again

And we grow old? No, they die too.

Their yearly trick of looking new

Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.

Last year is dead, they seem to say,

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) was an English poet and librarian who, in a 2003 poll conducted by the Poetry Book Society and the Poetry Library, was voted Britain’s favorite poet of the last fifty years. He received numerous awards for his writing, including an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1984 and a commemorative floor stone in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.