WINTER REMEMBERED

WINTER REMEMBEREDAs the rain pours down and the cold winds blow and the ice freezes the lake, I adore this bleak, frigid and grieving winter poem by John Crowe Ransom from 1922, that was posted a few weeks ago on Poem-a-day. It chills the bones! Love Susie. x


Winter Remembered

Two evils, monstrous either one apart,

Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:

A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,

And in the wood the furious winter blowing.

Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks

And past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter,

I glowed like them, the simple burning sticks,

Far from my cause, my proper heat, my centre.

Better to walk forth in the murderous air

And wash my wound in the snows; that would be healing,

Because my heart would throb less painful there,

Being caked with cold, and past the smart of feeling.

Which would you choose, and for what boot in gold,

The absence, or the absence and the cold?

John Crowe Ransom