This week’s choice is “June” by John Updike.
The sun is rich
John Updike (1932—2009)
And gladly pays
In golden hours,
Silver days,
Poem 444. June
The sun is rich
And gladly pays
In golden hours,
Silver days,
And long green weeks
That never end.
School’s out. The time
Is ours to spend.
There’s Little League,
Hopscotch, the creek,
And, after supper,
Hide-and-seek.
The live-long light
Is like a dream,
and freckles come
Like flies to cream.
John Updike was described by critics as chronicling the lives of “the American small town, Protestant middle class”. He wrote the “Rabbit” series of novels about the middle-class everyman Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, as well as other novels, short stories, poetry and children’s books.
This poem is an evocation of small-town American childhood: the long sunny days when school has finished for the year, filled with Little League Baseball, games, swimming in the creek and playing hide-and-seek in the dusk after supper. The long light days, merging into one another, are dream-like and the skin, warmed (mildly one hopes) by the sun, is peppered with freckles.
I like this poem because in a few sparse lines Updike conjures an endless summer, the sort of idyllic time the middle-class all seem to remember when responsibilities were non-existent and real freedom was enjoyed. How perfect these memories if such they are always seem to be—a golden age. I love his descriptions: the “golden hours,/silver days,/And long green weeks” and “The live-long light”.
There are not many performances online, so I have chosen Colchester Arts Centre’s version read by Anthony Roberts.
