Childlike Spring

The Easter Bunny?

Spring has come again.
The Earth is like
a child who knows
poems by heart.

~ Rilke ~
from Sonnets to Orpheus
~ translated by Edward Snow ~

I love this whimsical snail planter (found in the British garden of my parents - in - law) and the above bunny rabbit statuette (belonging to my British sister - in - law). Both figurines, as well as their attendant flowers, exemplify the child - like nature of Spring that Rilke captures in his simile of Earth as a poetic youngster. The following, also by Rilke, is a more serious poem for the Easter season; but keep in mind that, despite the maturity of its intropection, "this is how children cherish You":

Prayer #12

I believe in everything that has not been said,
I want to free my most pious feelings;
what no one has ever dared to want
will suddenly become my nature.

If this is impudent, my God, forgive me.
But with this I want to tell You
that my noblest power should be an instinct,
and thus without anger and without hesitation --
this is how children cherish You.

With this flood, with this flow
into the broad arms of the open sea,
with this expansive return,
I want to bear witness to You; I want to proclaim You
like none before.

And if this is pride, the let me be proud
in my prayer,
which stands so earnest and alone
before Your shadowed brow.

from Prayers of a Young Poet
written by by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
translated by Mark S. Burrows

Many thanks to my dear friend and spiritual advisor
Nancy C. Tiederman
for sending me this latest translation of Rilke's Prayers

Ready for the Shift

Surely Rilke would have been quick to observe that
Daylight Savings Time doesn't really save us anything.
It merely shifts an hour of light from morning to evening,
or an hour of darkness from evening to morning --
whichever way you want to look at it.

Prayer #1

The hour bows down and stirs me
with a clear and ringing stroke;
my senses tremble. I feel that I can —
and I seize the forming day.

Nothing was yet done before I beheld it,
and every becoming stood still;
my ways of seeing are ripe, and, like a bride,
to each one comes the thing each wills.

Nothing is too small for me, and I love it anyway
and paint it on the golden base and large —
and hold it high; and I don’t know whose
soul this might yet free . . .

On the 20th of September in the evening after a lengthy rainstorm,
when the sun suddenly broke through the forest’s dark canopy and through me.

Prayer #20

My life is not this steep hour
in which You see me hurrying so.
I am a tree standing before what I once was;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and, at that, the first to close.

I am the stillness between two notes
that don't easily harmonize,
because the note Death wants to lift itself up . . .

But in the dark interval both notes come
trembling, to join as one . . .
and the song remains, beautiful.

After this, the monk drew very near to God; on the same evening.

[Concluding notes from Rilke;
italics and ellipses in original text]
Both selections from Prayers of a Young Poet
written by by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
translated by Mark S. Burrows

Many thanks to my dear friend and spiritual advisor
Nancy C. Tiederman
for sending me this latest translation of Rilke's Prayers

Life's Calm Secret

You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces
that so work and feel thirst.

You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

by Rainer Maria Rilke

from the Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly

Readings for a Soulful Day

"Our effort, I suggest, can be dedicated to this: to assume the unity of Life and Death and let it be progressively demonstrated to us. So long as we stand in opposition to Death we will disfigure it. Believe me, my dear Countess, Death is our Friend, our closest friend, perhaps the only friend who can never be misled by our ploys and vacillations. And I do not mean that in the sentimental, romantic sense of distrusting or renouncing life. Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love. . . . Life always says Yes and No simultaneously. Death (I implore you to believe) is the true Yea-sayer. It stands before eternity and says only: Yes."

from Rainer Maria Rilke's (1875 - 1926)
"Letter to Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy"
Epiphany, 1923

Transformations

Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.

These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;

And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.

So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)

~ See also Edna St. Vincent Millay ~

Cemetery Photos ~ Charleston, South Carolina

Thanks to my friends
Ruth for sharing Rilke's letter
& Claude for sharing the Hardy poem.

Dagmar's Birthday

Lunch Friends: Dagmar, Kitti, Katy, Cathy
(My Birthday Last Year)
I dedicate this post to the memory of my friend Dagmar Murray, who was born on April 13th, 1959.

Another friend ~ www.jandonley.com ~ also born in April and often mentioned on my blogs, sent a link to the following poem the other day on facebook. Jan wasn't sending the poem, which she describes as "short and so, so beautiful," just to me. Nor did she send it in connection with Dagmar, who died last month, sadly and suddenly. However, as so often happens, Jan's message seemed to come at precisely the right time, thus I share Rilke's poem here today in honor of Dagmar's 52nd birthday:

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

by Rainer Maria Rilke
from his Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29
translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
recited on public radio by Joanna Macy

Read more for
Dagmar's Birthday
On The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

Black Catscapes

Black Cat by Owen Gent

Black Cat by Rainer Maria Rilke

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

The Two James

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

Read more by Rilke on:
The Fortnightly KC ~ The Quotidian Kit ~ Kitti's List

Catscapes by Lim Heng Swee

Live the Questions

Girl at Writing Table
by Kate Greenaway (1846 - 1901)
English children's book illustrator
"If you trust in Nature, in what is simple in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge. . . .

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. *Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."from Letter Four: 16 July 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet (to read online)
by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)

I also like this alternate translation from Stephen Mitchell:

"Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer."
As I wrote a few years back, my inclination to blog is fueled by "those moments when Life offers its own theme to a strand of apparently accidental events, and everything hangs together for a moment in such an uncanny way that you'd swear it was all planned out somehow!" The latest thrilling trail of irresistible coincidence that I just had to follow concerns the above quotation by Rilke.

For more on this ingenious web of connection and coincidence,
see my new post "Mental Beauty"
on The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

Jeopardy: No One Got It!

~ Christmas Gift Idea! ~

A funny sequence of events last night:

At 8pm:

I saw this facebook post on a friend's page:
"VILLANOVA! No one got it"
I meant to ask Gerry if it was perhaps a reference to a basketball game but forgot to do so. I don't know why my thoughts turned to basketball, but that's what came to mind.

At 9pm:
We watched Jeopardy! and could not guess this final clue on the topic of "Higher Education":

"Merrimack College is one of 2 Augustinian
institutions of higher learning in the U.S.;
in the news in 2025, this is the other."
We realized right away that they were asking where the new Pope went to college. Unfortunately, however, we did not know the answer, did not know anything about Merrimack College, and did not know that Villanova was Augustinian. Our bad.

To guess correctly, which we did not, you would need to know that

"Merrimack in Massachusetts and Villanova University in Pennsylvania are the only 2 Catholic Augustinian colleges in the USA. That’s just a fact you may know, and you may also know that Villanova was in the news in 2025 as the alma mater of Pope Leo XIV." [Reliable recaps: fikkle & fan]

At 10pm:
We decided to watch one of our seasonal favorites, Bill Murray's Scrooged.

Early in the movie, Bill / Frank announces to his coworkers that their new made - for - tv version of Dickens' Christmas Carol will "Scare the Dickens out of people." But, alas no one laughs at his joke, and he exclaims in annoyance: "No one gets me!"
At that moment the meaning of the facebook post
finally dawned on me; it was about Jeopardy!

"VILLANOVA! No one got it"!
Now why didn't it occur to me while watching Final Jeopardy! that even though I did not know the answer, I actually had the answer, as it had been given to me! As fate would have it, my friend's facebook post was such a subtly good hint — without being a spoiler -- that I didn’t get it until after the fact!

I wonder how often it happens -- with larger concerns than Facebook posts and Jeopardy! clues -- that we have been given   the answer on Monday that we are going to need on Wednesday.  The Universe has provided the information we need, but because we are human, we fail to realize.

Remember what Rilke says:

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

from Letter Four: 16 July 1903
by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)

I also like this alternate translation from Stephen Mitchell:

"Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer."

Gotta love Jeopardy!
Villanova
Moments of Truth
Running list of boo-boos
Purdue
Shakespeare
Olden days
Insomnia

Ripening Like A Tree: Arbor Day

Being an artist means: not numbering and counting,
but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap,
and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid
that afterward summer may not come.
It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient,
who are there as if eternity lay before them,
so unconcernedly silent and vast.
I learn it every day of my life,
learn it with pain I am grateful for:
patience is everything!

from Letter Four
23 April 1903 [Shakespeare's 339th Birthday!]
by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
in Letters to a Young Poet
[click to read online]
Additional Excerpts
from Letters to a Young Poet:

Mental Beauty
Ancestors
************
Live the Questions
Gender Equity
************
Rilke and Maso
Holiday Thoughts

P.S. StoryPeople for Arbor Day

Last Fruits

Fruit of the Vine Patio Night Light

Autumn Day
Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to ripen on the vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
bring them to ripeness, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine. . .

from the poem
by Rainer Marie Rilke

my favorite lines from various translations:
gratefulness
inward / outward
plough
poemhunter

You can read more Rilke
on my book list blog & on my fortnightly literary blog

Gender Equity

Singing People by Debra Frasier
from On the Day You Were Born

Excerpt from new post on Kitti's Book List
Rainer Maria Rilke: pp 77 - 78 . . . someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only of life and reality: the female human being. ~ 1904, from his Letters to a Young Poet

Carole Maso: p 37 . . . All the personal pronouns -- j/e, m/o, m/a, m/es -- are split to emphasize the disintegration of the self that occurs every time women speak male language. ~ 1993, from her novel AVA

*******************************I wonder if Rilke would be disappointed to see what a lengthy and hard - fought transformation it has become? I appreciate Maso's description of the so often unacknowledged and wearying disintegration. First comes the exclusive language; then comes the taxing enterprise of pulling yourself back together again, putting yourself into the picture, the self - integration that is not a given. Like hearing "father" and thinking "and mother." Or "brother" and "sister too." "Men" -- "and women." "Mankind" -- "oh yeah, that means me."

I think the beautiful song "Let There Be Peace On Earth," (sung here by Gladys Knight in 2008 at the National Memorial Day Concert, Washington, D.C.) is a perfect example of what Maso is talking about here. I've loved this song since Junior High when we sang it in Girls' Chorus (emphasis added for irony!), but it requires some mental gymnastics to repair the damage done by the gender exclusivity of that key phrase:

"With God as our Father, brothers all are we
Let me walk with my brother in perfect harmony."
These words are chosen as a fitting observance of a National event, yet by their very nature, they omit half the people in our country. Okay, I can fix that in my head; but should I have too? I can try to believe that "when you say "men" you mean "women" too; that doesn't always work. But one thing I know for sure, without Gender Equity, there is never going to be Peace on Earth.

Slowly the West Reaches

Cold January Sunset

Sunset

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs--

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

Another post & another poem
in honor of my mother's 91st birthday
January 21, 1931 ~ June 15, 2020

Again, Again!

Again, again, even if we know the country side of love,
and the tiny churchyard with it's names mourning,
and the chasm, more and more silent, terrifying, into which
the others

dropped: we walk out together anyway
beneath the ancient trees, we lie down again,
again among the flowers [or the snow!], and face the sky.

Both poems by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
Translated by Robert Bly (1926 – 2021)

See also:
"Staying Alive" ~ FN & QK
"Fenceposts" ~ FN & QK

P.S.
Summer 2022

Get Out of Town

Thanks to Jim Barnes ~ poet, teacher & friend
for helping me track down
this long-lost poem
by National Treasure
David Russell Wagoner
(June 5, 1926 - December 18, 2021)

Advice from a poet:
"Get out of town."

Wagoner graduated from highschool in 1944. "Valedictory to Standard Oil" was written 22 years later (published in 1966), and "Letter to An Old Poet" an additional 47 years later (2013). In the early poem, he thinks of those long-ago classmates, and in the later one he recalls a helpful English teacher and a grammar lesson from those schooldays in Whiting, Indiana. Thanks to Miss Clippinger, he realizes that his life task without ceasing is to consider every possibility and maximize his options:

Letter To An Old Poet

~Inspired by Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet

Do you still believe, old man, you are a poet?
If so, what you must do is so obvious,
you shouldn’t need reminding. You should keep trying
to do whatever you haven’t done or start
doing again what you didn’t manage to do
right in the first place. You should stay alive
as often as possible and keep yourself open
to anything out of place and everything
with nowhere else to go, to carry what’s left
of your voice out and beyond, into, over,
and under, past, within, outside, between,
among, across, along, and up and around
and to be beside yourself when the spirit moves you
and to thank Miss Clippinger for your prepositions.

David Wagoner (1926 - 2021)

Click here to read
more by David Wagoner

Read Before Thinking

"Access to knowledge is the supreme act
of truly great civilizations.
Of all the institutions that purport to do this,
free libraries stand virtually alone
in accomplishing this mission."
~ Toni Morrison ~



If you're looking for something to read, here's
what I've posted lately on Kitti's Book List:

Fresh Insights & Bursts of Clueness

Holiday Thoughts from Powell, Rilke and Maso

Another Year Over

And a New One Just Begun

Book Haven

Thanks to my sister Peg for sending me
one of these cool readerly shirts from Wonder Book!

Leaf Pressed, Moon Tipped

"So our job as writers is not to diddle around our whole lives in the dot but to take one big step out of it and sink into the big sky and write from there. Let everything run through us and grab as much as we can of it with a pen and paper. Let yourself live in something that is already rightfully yours—your own wild mind." ~Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind

Into this World
Let us die gracefully into this world
like a leaf pressed in stone
let us go quietly breathing our last breath
let the sun continue to revolve in its great golden dance
let us leave it be as it is
and not hold on
not even to the moon
tipped as it will be tonight
and beckoning wildly in the sea [emphasis added]

Natalie Goldberg

*************************
Just the other day I was writing about Elinor Wylie's often anthologized poem, "Velvet Shoes" (see Fortnightly and Quotidian posts; and also Nets to Catch the Winds, 1921). It seems that I have known Wylie's elegant, seasonal poem forever, though I can't remember when or where I first encountered it. Most likely my long familiarity comes from its inclusion in one of my many Christmas anthologies. You can find it here, for example:

I'm also lucky enough to own a vintage copy of Wylie's fourth and last collection of poems, Angels and Earthly Creatures, published in 1929.

Front page inscription seen below:
Marie Hobson
Park Chambers
N.Y.C.

One of my favorites from Angels and Earthly Creatures is this brief lyric, tucked in amidst the sonnets and longer elegies:

Fair Annet's Song
One thing comes and another thing goes:
Frosts in November drive away the rose;
Like a blowing ember the wind-flower blows
And drives away the snows.

It is sad to remember and sorrowful to pray:
Let us laugh and be merry, who have seen today
The last of the cherry and the first of the may;
And neither one will stay.

Wylie's bittersweet comparison of November to May has been set to music a number of times, notably by composer Paul Carey in his four movement tribute to the seasons of the year, Into This World. [click to read his explanation].

Carey choses Wylie's poem, "Annet's Song" to symbolize spring (though equally appropriate for late autumn); Robert Louis Stevenson's "Tropic Rain" to capture summer's intensity; an adaptation of Rilke's "The Leaves are Falling" to evoke a gentle autumn; and to remind us of winter's finality -- as well as for the title of his choral arrangement -- the haunting lines of Natalie Goldberg's "Into this World" (above).

*************************
P.S.
I seem to recall my son Ben taking a picture
of me photographing the sidewalk leaf in the rain:

New Year's Eve 2012 ~ Dallas

P.S.S.
For more wintry snow poems
see my current FORTNIGHTLY post
~ "First Snow in Indiana"

Not So Sure

My brother's New Year Joke:
"After 2020 and 2021,
I'm not so sure a New Year is such a good idea.
Couldn't we just get a Certified Pre-Owned Year from the 90's?"

*********************

I was reminded of how this beautiful sentiment
used to be my favorite quote for New Year's Day:

"And now let us welcome the new year,
full of things that have never been." --Rilke

But now -- after 2020 & 2021 --
it sounds like a threat. So, no thanks!

Happy New Year!

"And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been." --Rilke

SEE ALSO FAST AWAY THE OLD YEAR PASSES!

@ MY FORTNIGHTLY BLOG

You See Yourself, Tiny

Black Cat

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)

My fb friend Tawny designed this one,
using the Tap Color app

Happy Halloween!

&

"Harvest Home"
my recent post

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

"The same war continues . . . "

As I have mentioned before, for an occasional infusion of creativity, I like to peruse the paintings of my friend Leonard Orr and challenge myself to describe each work of art in one or two words. For this one (above), I thought, "Veterans Day" because it brought to mind the Buddy Poppies that are designed and distributed by the VFW. These little red boutonnières have always been a part of my earliest Armistice / Veterans Day memories, when I would go to the cemetery and the parade with my parents and grandparents.

And for this one, I thought:
"In Flanders fields the poppies blow . . . "
Another fitting poem for the day:

Life at War

The disasters numb within us
caught in the chest, rolling
in the brain like pebbles. The feeling
resembles lumps of raw dough

weighing down a child’s stomach on baking day.
Or Rilke said it, ‘My heart. . .
Could I say of it, it overflows
with bitterness . . . but no, as though

its contents were simply balled into
formless lumps, thus
do I carry it about.’
The same war

continues.
We have breathed the grits of it in, all our lives,
our lungs are pocked with it,
the mucous membrane of our dreams
coated with it, the imagination
filmed over with the gray filth of it:

the knowledge that humankind,

delicate Man, whose flesh
responds to a caress, whose eyes
are flowers that perceive the stars,

whose music excels the music of birds,
whose laughter matches the laughter of dogs,
whose understanding manifests designs
fairer than the spider’s most intricate web

still turns without surprise, with mere regret
to the scheduled breaking open of breasts whose milk
runs out over the entrails of still-alive babies,
transformation of witnessing eyes to pulp-fragments,
implosion of skinned penises into carcass-gulleys.

We are the humans, men who can make;
whose language imagines mercy,
lovingkindness we have believed one another
mirrored forms of a God we felt as good—

who do these acts, who convince ourselves
it is necessary; these acts are done
to our own flesh; burned human flesh
is smelling in Vietnam as I write.

Yes, this is the knowledge that jostles for space
in our bodies along with all we
go on knowing of joy, of love;

our nerve filaments twitch with its presence
day and night,
nothing we say has not the husky phlegm of it in the saying,
nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness,
the deep intelligence living at peace would have.

by Denise Levertov , 1923 - 97
Politically acitve British - born American poet and educator

from To Stay Alive
New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1971

A closing thought for Veterans Day:

"I hate with a murderous hatred those men who, having lived their youth,
would send into war other youth, not lived, unfulfilled,
to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men,
making their wars that boys must die."

Mary Roberts Rinehart, 1876 - 1958
American mystery writer and war correspondent

*******************

See also my previous Veterans Day posts:

Armistice Day (2009)

Wartime Soldier, Wartime Child (2010)

*******************

and my previous Leonard Orr posts:

End of Summer Sounds

Golden Paintings by Leonard Orr

Excellent Images

Happy Birthday Dylan Thomas

Wind from a Leaf

Flowering Cherry with Poem Slips
Japanese painter, Tosa Mitsuoki, 1617 – 1691
If only I'd known this poem
back when Y2K was all the rage:

from Prayer #8

I'm living just as the century departs.
One feels the wind from a large leaf
that God and you and I had written on,
which turns above by hands no one knows.

One feels the radiance of a new page
on which everything could still come to be. ~ 1899

by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
from Prayers of a Young Poet
translated by Mark S. Burrows

Mitsuoki ~ Autumn Maples

Previous March First Posts

2010: Kiss Me & Kiss Today

2011: My Vegetable Love

2012: Love However Brief

2013: Beyond Ideas

2014: The First [Mild] Day of March

Thanks George Sfedu!

Or ~ more like what we're experiencing today:
Snow in March, 1904
by Russian Impressionist
Igor Grabar, 1871 - 1960