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
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Public Domain
‘The Snow Man’ by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was first published in 1921 in the magazine Poetry, and was reprinted in Stevens’s first collection Harmonium in 1923.
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Nice. Reminds me. I used to have an early morning paper route as a boy. I would peddle my bicycle, weighted with a hundred Sunday editions at 4:30 am. I would stop to rest, blow warm air into my gloves, and watch in a feeble, pink dawn, the winter wind blow a curl of snow off the top of Mt. Rainier. Quiet. The sound of ice, blowing like sand. I prefer Maui.
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A dose of Wallace Stevens is often a very good thing.
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