daffodils, That come before the swallow dares*

I bought the artist a rubber-banded bunch of unflowered daffodils the other day. They sat in my hand like a sad clump of long and lanky shrivelled vegetables of indeterminate origin. There was something damp-dry and slightly previous about the stems. The disc-shaped corona was just a dream. Narcissus is the botanic name of the daffodil. Well I hardly felt narcissistic as I unpeeled the skinny, snappy rubber bands, filled a bright red vase, and dropped them in. Wordsworth ...

"I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze"

... did not spring to mind. In fact, I felt like an unpoetic oaf. I felt as though some cynical hand had dispatched these bulbs back to these shores, charging so little that the person who broke their back planting them must have been paid a pittance. But then when I walked into the flat this afternoon after a tumultuous time in the centre of the capital, they were all laughing at me, all twenty of them, bright and yellow and slightly mad. They had flowered. The pigmentation was like the meaning of the word yellow. I was reminded of E.E. Cummings - or ee cummings - this time, a favourite poet when I was fourteen ...

"in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me"

It really is almost as if the daffodils are having the last laugh.
* William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale