yes is a pleasant country:
if's wintry
(my lovely)
let's open the year
both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear
love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we're)
The first line says it all. Having read just about every poem in his anthology, I believe there may be no other single line that sums up his views so well. And mine too. I interpret this to express that being positive is not only a nice place to be, but that it is a choice. Not only is it a choice, but it is a place you can travel towards.A destination and a place to dwell. So true. Like the "May I be gay..." poem, he finds a way to exhort us toward recognizing our agency in the world.
The final stanza is just heartbreakingly beautiful. So simple. Cute, even. Deceptively so. We do tend to pass up the truth in favor of something more intellectually stimulating, and that is the risk here. Of course, this poem is romantic, and I err in that direction as well, but there is no disputing the truth of the lines. Who would question that love is a deeper place, or season, than our intellect? Not that one is more important than the other, but if you think of our selves as having weather, certainly love causes our most intense meteorological events! In fact, our language reflects this in the way we talk about intellectual interests that are so moving to us that we "love" them. They cross over.
More broadly, I agree with his suggestion that we should use reason as a vital tool (vital to combat all sorts of craziness) but revere love as a seminal pursuit. Being in "April" is a very common reference in his poems for love, and he uses it again here. Elsewhere he discusses the abundance of life in spring and the "opening" and flowering as metaphors for what happens in our hearts.
I hope it is clear that my musings here are all simply adoration. Nothing more. I write a few words off the top of my head that come to mind about these poems, but never in a million years of writing could I convey what they really mean to me. Or, more properly, I would need to write poems about his poems to express my connections to them.
Such wonderful mentors and companions...
