a breath of fresh air

Coincidentally (okay, not actually coincidentally; obviously I looked through all the other poems in his SoundCloud), Samuel West has also done a beautiful reading of this poem. This is really a March poem, but it's also a death poem, and a poem about change and beauty and facing the world unafraid.

I have a friend
At the end
Of the world.
His name is a breath

Of fresh air.
He is dressed in
Grey chiffon. At least
I think it is chiffon.
It has a
Peculiar look, like smoke.

It wraps him round
It blows out of place
It conceals him
I have not seen his face.

But I have seen his eyes, they are
As pretty and bright
As raindrops on black twigs
In March, and heard him say:

I am a breath
Of fresh air for you, a change
By and by.

Black March I call him
Because of his eyes
Being like March raindrops
On black twigs.

(Such a pretty time when the sky
Behind black twigs can be seen
Stretched out in one
Uninterrupted
Cambridge blue as cold as snow.)

But this friend
Whatever new names I give him
Is an old friend. He says:

Whatever names you give me
I am
A breath of fresh air,
A change for you.

—Stevie Smith (1902-1971), "Black March," written in 1971, shortly before she died, and originally published posthumously in Scorpion and Other Poems (1972).