Not yet though. Today it is snowing again. Been snowing all day, The sky is white, the ground is white. You would think it would be bright out but this white is another species of dark. You cannot see far.
I have been thinking of these two poems. New England poets these-- they both certainly knew the feel of snow underfoot, nose pinching cold that stings the lungs, and cold wet and up your sleeves. The icy coating on mittens has not changed in a hundred years, or a thousand.Nor has grief, and love, and anger-- which is what the poems are really about of course.
After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?
The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.
That is Emily Dickinson of course. Untitled, like many of hers.
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
And Robert Frost above-- a poem of his that I actually like. You proibably know it-- but a revisit is sometimes nice.
Hard to believe that these two were writing a hundered years apart. Hers seems the more modern and experimantal.
