Slant
If the angle of an eye is all,
the slant of hope, the slant of dreaming, according to each life,
what is the light of this city, . . .
If the angle of an eye is all,
the slant of hope, the slant of dreaming, according to each life,
what is the light of this city, . . .
Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished, . . .
The snow is deep on the ground.
Always the light falls
Softly down on the hair of my belovèd. . . .
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; . . .
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air . . .
Timing’s everything. The vapor rises
high in the sky, tossing to and fro,
then freezes, suddenly, and crystalizes . . .
A castaway blown south from the artic tundra
sits on a stump in an abandoned farmer’s field.
Beyond the dunes cattails toss and bend as snappy . . .
The gravel road rides with a slow gallop
over the fields, the telephone lines
streaming behind, its billow of dust . . .
So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving, . . .
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
. . .