The poem
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know what despair is; then winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive, earth suppressing me. I didn't expect to waken again, to feel in damp earth my body able to respond again, remembering after so long how to open again in the cold light of earliest spring--
afraid, yes, but among you again crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.