Not counting what poets have had to say about it, a reflection on spring that could not be more unexpected — or apt:

… Matisse soon began work on designing a sublime Chapel of the Rosary for Vence, and he wanted this building to possess ‘the lightness and joyousness of springtime, which never lets anyone suspect the labours it cost.’ …

from ‘Masterpiece: A Radical’s Emancipation of Color,’ Richard Cork, 11 April 2014

From a dear and essential friend of many years in St. Petersburg came excellent news of his family, last week, with a brief preface … ‘This year again the Easter holiday is celebrated at the same time in the Greek Orthodox Church as in the Catholic Church and the churches of Western Europe etc.’ … and this: … which reminded us of a dispatch from Milan last Easter, where someone else, treasured for an eternity, attended on behalf of a new Russian addition to her family – already close, a few weeks before the wedding – a ‘blessing of the eggs’:

We hope for a peaceful settlement of differences between Russia and the West over the Ukraine. Hope against hope.

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