A Green Meadow Poem by Bernard Kennedy

Easter brings up for me that old
medieval hymn about
'now the green blade riseth,
out of the buried grain'.
And because its raining,
in Dublin, on this
Easter Day the grass continues green.
I noticed after a holiday in Crete,
amid the dry and parched land,
and reading Kazantzakis,
how green the fields were
as the plane circled over Lambay,
descending towards these green fields.

My father believed that bedroom walls
should have a green tint, if not all green
colored walls. It rested the eyes.
He like Spinoza was tired, I guess,
of grinding, as an Optician, the needed lens,
or reading prescriptions as a Chemist.
He needed green. Not as a green horn,
or green about the ears, or neophyte,
but on the eyes and what it did,
rested.
And meadows were play stations,
to roll in and laughter thrill the air,
below, in the green meadow, in the summers
evening, when heated from ball games,
naked swam in the river at that
greened meadows edge.

'out of the buried grain,
now the green blade riseth'.