Spring is a bitch to the barren,
a stone-cold pastoral to the lucky few with an empty womb.
It’s hard enough, when the world blooms,
but then that asshole Botticelli unloads his palette
like only a maniac under the Medici could,
cramming his canvas with five hundred
kinds of plants. The fecundity of it!
That’s not a painting, just a
golden-age greenhouse full of half-naked girls:
oranges swell like bellies and breasts,
while a pregnant goddess in maternity dress
offers only a rose and a knowing smile.
It’s like somebody got the whole damned world with child.
It’s a Renaissance riddle full of unanswered questions:
Why does Hermes stare off in some other direction?
Why is Cupid obese? Why do bad things happen?
You see
spring is only a myth to the barren,
for we cannot let ourselves believe
in tales where every ravished nymph conceives,
where Jove himself has a fetus sewn up in his thigh,
where the semen of gods showers down from the sky.
We grow to resent the very thing we desire—
dream of setting that bastard’s allegorical woods on fire.
Yes, the other nine months of the year
brush by without pain;
but April comes, with the smell of rain,
and the barren remember our annual reason
for grieving the winter we carry
into every season.
