"Spring Song" (1948) by J. C. Sturm

J.C. (Jacqueline Cecilia) Sturm (1927-2009) is an important Maori writer. As spring approaches, I reach for this poem:

Spring Song

Oh certainly it has been a fine day,
so fine I went walking on laughing stones
all laughing at my brain-clock hands
whirling round for a purpose never there
and never likely to be, only tick-tock.

Passing by a gay tree-judge I was tried,
condemned and hung full of care from a careless
twig with a blossom round my neck; quartered
by a sunbeam and hymned by a thrush
with a flooding throat, no tick-tock.

Till a green wind blew me cold into
a daffodil grave to bury my winter there;
rolled in an earth bed under a sun
blanket, was happy to grow as cabbages
grow, knowing nothing of tick-tock, no.