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I built a fence - a fence for the wind.
I neither planned to stop it long
Nor fence it in from it's night time wandering.
My thoughts were this-
If she is bent on such mischief as drifting snow,
Why not pile it here along the hill
Instead of on a road where I must go.
So I built a fence - a fence for the wind.
Six hundred crates and boxes in a row
Were piled along a hillside path
Where she must go to reach my road.
With six hundred crates and boxes
I built a fence - a fence for the wind.
And then, when all the skies were fair,
With a million snowflakes in her hair,
She came dancing through the night.
She kissed the willow tree in passing,
Took the lane,
Came down across another field to fill my road.
She never even saw the fence I had built -
A fence for the wind.
-Max Ellison
is singing)silence:but unsinging. In
spectral such hugest how hush,one
dead leaf stirring makes a crash
-far away(as far as alive)lies
april;and i breathe-move-and-seem some
perpetually roaming whylessness-
autumn has gone:will winter never come?
o come,terrible anonymity;enfold
phantom me with the murdering minus of cold
-open this ghost with millionary knives of wind-
scatter his nothing all over what angry skies and
gently
(very whiteness:absolute peace,
never imaginable mystery)
descend
- e e cummings
by Waclaw Potocki (Polish, 1625-1696)
The frost bit deep. When heavy guns were dragged
Across a marsh no inch of bogland sagged.
The dubious fords raised solid crystal beams.
A glass bridge spanned the deeper parts of streams.
The snow was shameless in its secret keeps
Though clouds had dumped it carelessly in heaps;
But where frost parched it, sparkling silks were spun
And polished lilies to receive the sun.
Someone to whom the war means nothing yet
Glides on a sledge, its runners barely wet,
So light it seems: one horse has leopard spots
And one's hawk-mottled, bird-like as it trots.
A hunter with his hounds treks through the snow.
But, soaking toast in beer by the hearth's glow,
An old man sits. He doesn't want to drive
Off in a sledge. The Spring will soon arrive
And his death with it. Now, since his teeth have gone,
He sucks soaked bread. If any man lives on
Until his youngest grand-daughter gives birth,
This is the last delight he'll find on earth.
In short: the sun reached Capricorn -- no more --
And Winter fell from heaven to this hard floor.
(translated by Jerzy Peterkiewicz and Burns Singer)
by William Stafford (1913-1993)
A storm that needed a mountain
met it where we were:
we woke up in a gale
that was reasoning with our tent,
and all the persuaded snow
streaked along, guessing the ground.
We turned from that curtain, down.
But sometime we will turn
back to the curtain and go
by plan through an unplanned storm,
disappearing into the cold,
meanings in search of a world.
(from The Darkness Around Us is Deep, Selected Poems of William Stafford ©1993)
FOUND IN A STORM by William Stafford (1913-1993)
Ooo! Whitty, I like that. This Stafford fellow could be said to be the Hemingway of Modern Poetry. But I think he's much better than that.
Yes, milum...Stafford is indeed a gem of American (US) Literature that I "discovered" in 1992, just a year before his death after a distinguished career. He didn't cater to the "poetry establishment" (or to the 'anti-academics' for that matter)...he just stood his own ground. And his Native American heritage brings a distinctive perspective to his musings. Here's a poem from the same volume that should be apropos for a gathering of linguaphiles(and it's even in keeping with the winter theme):
HOW THESE WORDS HAPPENED
In winter, in the dark hours, when others
were asleep, I found these words and put them
together by their appetites and respect for
each other. In stillness, they jostled. They traded
meanings while pretending to have only one.
Monstrous alliances never dreamed of before
began. Sometimes they last. Never again
do they separate in this world. They die
together. They have a fidelity that no
purpose or pretense can ever break.
And all of this happens like magic to the words
in those dark hours when others sleep.
--William Stafford
© 1992 by William Stafford
THE SNOW
by Emily Dickinson
It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.
It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain,--
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.
It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil
On stump and stack and stem,--
The summer's empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.
It ruffles wrists of posts,
As rankles of a queen,--
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.
by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes,
And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind
Like agéd warriors westward, tragic, thinned
Of half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes,
Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak,
Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,--
Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes
My heart. I know that Beauty must ail and die,
And will be born again,--but ah, to see
Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky!
Oh, Autumn! Autumn!--What is the Spring to me?
(from First Fig and other Poems, © 1921 by Edna St. Vincent Millay)
My knee aches:
So do my Shoulders and my Elbows.
The Rain falls
Into my Soul, dampens my Spirit.
The Day dawns
Windows are Dark with gleaming Frost curls.
The Ice cracks
Inside my Brain and at my Toes' ends
The World's End.
And sunshine thru the frost
Glinters in my eyes
Making blinks and tears.
Black tree-shapes against
The pale blue of winter skies
Tempt me out from winter's fireside,
From friendly community of ales and tales.
The squirrel's tail flirts on the branch,
Rabbits' footprints in the snow
Say life is with us yet.
The sparrows, cold-huddled on my gutter,
Nudge each other.
"Look," they murmur, "Look."
"Spring is coming."
© H.Walklett 2002
I particularly like The Ice cracks
Inside my Brain and at my Toes' ends - very evocative winter image.
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