color too much

Yesterday I was out in the yard admiring spring and I had a really intense feeling of pain. Pain that the grass was so green and the sky was so blue. Do you ever feel things so intensely that it hurts? Sometimes that happens to me when I see colors in the natural world. Yesterday it was the grass, it was so very green. Sometimes the grass seems to green that if you walk on it, the color might come off on your feet. Not like some tacky spray painted LA lawn, but as though the chlorophyll is just bursting out of the leaves.

And the sky was so blue.

It reminded me of a poem I liked in college, one of the few I memorized. Called Spleen, by Paul Verlaine.

Spleen

Les roses étaient toutes rouges,
Et les lierres étaient tout noirs.

Chère, pour peu que tu te bouges,
Renaissent tous mes désespoirs.

Le ciel était trop bleu, trop tendre
La mer trop verte et l'air trop doux.

Je crains toujours,- ce qu'est d'attendre!
Quelque fuite atroce de vous.

Du houx à la feuille vernie
Et du luisant buis je suis las,

Et de la campagne infinie
Et de tout, fors de vous, hélas!

Or, in English:

The roses were so very red
The ivy deepest black.

Darling, for fear that you might leave
Reawaken all my despair.

The sky was too blue, too soft,
The sea too green, the air too sweet.

And yet I fear you'll leave,
such torment, waiting.

I'm tired of shiny-leaved holly
and of the gleaming box-tree

And the endless countryside
And of all, in fact, save you.