an oldie, but nice to see it in the proper "Harmonium" order so quickly into the Collected (begun on a whim on the ferry, also new a water damaged but not too badly copy of Bernadette Mayer's "Memory", which I'm saving for a train or bus trip) with W looking sideways from the stars--

The Snow Man

Wallace Stevens

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.


photo via Greenpoint Picture Tour - Page 1 - The Old Gang in The Olden Days--a good group!