Showing posts with label wallace stevens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wallace stevens. Show all posts

Thursday, January 29, 2009

a poem in this time of Winter, said Princess Haiku


Ice storms and fierce cold have swept across the Northern States. There is no better night to appreciate a "snow" poem by Wallace Stevens.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

Fir the Listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.