My greetings for the equinox

Although in Britain the weather is miserable today I can see trees with large buds and some with blossom from my window. The earth seems ready to wake up and renew itself. Chaucer wrote about it and I learned these words when I was young and they have stayed in my head ever since.

I set them out having simply changed the spelling of the old English and the odd word order:-

When that April with his showers sweet

The drought of March has pierced to the root

And bathed every vine in such liquor

Of which virtue engendered is the flower

When Zephyrus with his sweet breath

Inspired has in every holt and heath

Tender crops, and the young sun

Has in the ram half his course run

And small fowls make melody

That sleep all the night with open eye

We need to sleep with one eye open. The world is changing and the largest changes are not political or caused by the interaction of beliefs or nations. The changes are in nature and even when we sleep we must keep one eye open lest we cause our planet to change for the worse forever.

Whatever your beliefs and wherever you are, I wish you a very happy equinox.