“You mustn’t think that summer will come”

“You mustn’t think that summer will come” is a verse of deliberate, almost magical creation: summer does not simply arrive but must be started, made from flowers, green pasture, flowing water, birds, and places for children. Presented in fragments across material dated 1994 and 1981, it makes renewal sound like an act of will, while its gentle images acquire a sharper edge beside scenes of discomfort and exclusion.

The speaker who makes summer

The opening stanza rejects the expectation that summer will come by itself. Its speaker describes removing snow and causing flowers to bloom and pasture to turn green, so that summer exists because someone has made it. The language gives ordinary seasonal change the scale of a personal power: nature is not merely observed but fashioned, one element at a time.

The next fragment extends this creative role to a whole living environment. Water runs in a stream; swallows and the midges they feed on appear; new leaves and birds’ nests fill out the scene; and the evening sky becomes rosy. The sequence moves from water to animals, plants, and light, giving the imagined world a sense of abundance built through linked acts of provision.

Childhood and the promise of a place

In the fragment associated with Polcirkeln in 1981, the speaker makes wild strawberries because children deserve them, then imagines beautiful places where they can run and feel summer in their legs. The verse’s concern is not only with a season but with what a season permits: pleasure, movement, and a setting in which children can be children. Its concrete gifts—berries, open space, and running—make care appear as something enacted by creating the conditions for it.

The passage follows a reference to the Original Order and Pythia’s instructions, placing the poem’s imaginative power near language of rules and authority. The verse itself, however, speaks through gifts and natural abundance. That juxtaposition leaves its promise of protection and childhood alongside a more severe frame, rather than resolving the tension between them.

Recurrence and contrast

The verse appears in pieces rather than as a single uninterrupted poem. Its 1994 fragments accompany a deserted beach where Madeleine is irritated by the rustling of a blue plastic windbreak, and another passage places the seasonal imagery near her loose tooth, the taste of blood, and a sting like ice. These physical details contrast with the poem’s green pasture, flowing water, and rosy sky: the promised warmth is set against a body registering discomfort.

The contrast makes the refrain’s insistence on making summer significant. Renewal is not presented as automatic or guaranteed; in the poem, someone must initiate it and produce the world in which children can flourish. Its recurring movement from a bleak or uncertain premise toward deliberately created abundance gives the verse both its tenderness and its unease.