NOSTOS
There was an apple tree in the yard —
this would have been
forty years ago — behind,
only meadows. Drifts
of crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor’s yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from the tennis courts —
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.
-Louise Glück
Gladsome Lights 
Beautiful! and so true, I think. My memories of beautiful things seen or experienced in childhood come forward and color the beauty I see now – a beauty so irretrievable, somehow, but which I trust is only an echo of the beauty of heaven. Also, that Van Gogh picture has a little of that magical character to it – I can almost feel it.
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Beauty upon beauty, beautiful memories overlaying one another, piling up more and more as we get older… Sometimes I feel that my heart will burst with the happiness of it.
I’m glad you understand. And that you like the painting. I sometimes spend a lot of time trying to find a work of art that seems to fit.
❤
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This is a splendid poem and I really love the Van Gogh illustration.
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I was just thinking about this same idea of how our image of what is beautiful is formed when we are young – I love certain flowers in gardens because they are what my mother and grandfather planted. What also resonates in this poem is the line about trees blooming around the speaker’s birthday. I feel like crabapples and dogwoods used to bloom closer to my birthday in late May, but the crabapples are finished and the dogwood blossoms are falling. Maybe this is an example of a warming climate – or a mistaken memory!
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