The speaker describes a painful kind of awakening. Before losing someone she loved, she passed through the world without really noticing its beauty—the wine-like smell of an apple orchard, the bright blue of a wildflower. Grief changed her eyes. Now small things strike her with almost unbearable force: spring rain gushing from a drainpipe makes her understand why lonely people weep as they pass by. She calls this new awareness being “wise,” but it is the wisdom of sorrow. Every dawn brings tears, not because the world is ugly, but because it is so full and vivid and she cannot share it. The final lines land with quiet devastation: she wants to run and tell the dead person everything she now sees, but cannot. The mood is tender, lonely, and quietly heartbroken.
Wise — Summary
An apple orchard smells like wine; A succory flower is blue; Until Grief touched these eyes of mine, Such things I never knew.
And now indeed I know so plain Why one would like to cry When spouts are full of April rain — Such lonely folk go by!
So wise — so wise — that my tears fall Each breaking of the dawn; That I would run to tell you all — But you are dead and gone.