Yes it hurts when buds burst.
Why otherwise would spring hesitate?
Why otherwise was all warmth and longing locked under pale and bitter ice?
What fever for the new compels it to burst?
Yes it hurts when the buds burst,
there is pain when something grows
and when something must close.
Yes it hurts when the ice drops melt.
Shivering, anxious, swollen it hangs,
gripping the twig but beginning to slip-
its weight tugs it downward, though it resists.
It hurts to become uncertain, cowardly, dissolving
to feel the pull and call of the depth,
yet to hang and only shiver -
to want to remain, keep firm -
yet want to fall.
Then, when it is worst and nothing helps,
they burst, as if in ecstasy, the first buds of the tree,
when fear itself is compelled to let go,
they fall in a glistening veil, all the drops from the twig,
blinking away their fears of the new,
shutting out their doubts about the journey,
feeling for an instant how this is their greatest safety,
to trust in that daring
that shapes the world.
-Karin Boye
