A Poem For A Tuesday

To Daffodils
Robert Herrick

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not yet attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.

I forced Simon to read this poem because I found it both timely (daffodils at the lake were emerging) and amazing (for myriad reasons). Great word, "myriad." Anyway, Simon obeyed and said, "I read it as equating human existence to being short in the span of life as daffodils are to spring. Is that the wrong interpretation?" I think it's a spectacular interpretation. In the first stanza, the narrator describes his desire for the daffodils to survive a bit longer into the spring. Slowly the stanza starts to bring humans into the picture with "having pray'd together, we / Will go with you along." Then the second stanza makes it clear that the narrator is comparing the daffodils' brief existence to our own little blips of life. We grow to meet decay and our hours, our time here, slowly dry away like a summer rain or morning dew, each drop or each life unique but never to return. Naturally though, the daffodils return the next year...I wonder how that fits in.

It's intense. A poem I initially imagined would be about bright yellow daffodils breaking up the winter gloom turns into a statement on their short life span, and ours right along with them. Dark, but also perfectly practical. It's true. We're here. We're gone. Pretty standard fact.

More than his interpretation though, I was intrigued by Simon asking if it was wrong. I think this is one of the most challenging things about poetry, or ballet, or modern dance, or visual art, or music. The notion that there is a "right" thing to feel or understand after viewing it. Sure, the artist or poet or choreographer likely has an intention when they create a piece. Maybe some driving thing they want to express, but that doesn't mean any differing interpretation is "wrong." Nothing can be right or wrong when it comes to understanding art. It's not arithmetic. You can't prove any one interpretation is any more or less "correct" than another. There is no answer. That's the beauty of it and why we need art. It inspires people to imagine, create, and think in response. To know what's it's like for something not to be A or B but somewhere between. To live in that space where there is beauty in the varied palette of interpretations. Where people talk to each other about what they think without  being entrenched in what they view as "right" or "wrong." You know, like basically everything else in our country right now.

We need more art.