End of April

Phillis Levin’s poem, “The End of April,” is an extended metaphor about loss and how memory can sometimes be triggered by an innocent object, in this case an empty eggshell.

In the poem, the speaker discovers “a robin’s egg” (Line 2) under a “cherry tree” (Line 1). The title of the poem, “The End of April,” suggests the time of year the incident takes place, invoking the end of the month and the close of early spring. The springtime setting combined with the sense of finality suggests the passing of a youthful phase of the speaker’s life, as poetic tradition often equates spring with adolescence and early adulthood. There is also an equation of the closing of the month with the end of the speaker’s connection with the unknown “you” they begin to remember. The speaker has been “thinking of you” (Line 4) as they “knee[l] in the grass among fallen blossoms” (Line 5). This act of remembering, combined with the “end” indicated in the title, suggests that this person exists only in the speaker’s past rather than in the speaker’s present.

The fact that the speaker is “kneeling” (Line 5) mimics the action of prayer or supplication, with the arch of the tree reflecting the architecture of a cathedral.