Classic and Contemporary Poetry
NORTH WINTER, by HAYDEN CARRUTH Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Coming of winter Last Line: North is / nothing Subject(s): Arctic; Winter | ||||||||
1 Coming of winter is a beech sapling rising silverly in a brown field in bramble in thicket the raspberry the rosemallow all gone to rust a silver sapling to which in wind and the judaskisses of snow the starved brown leaves cling and cling. 2 In spring this mountain was a fish with blond scales in summer it was a crab with a green shell in fall it became a leopard with a burnished coat in winter the mountain is a bird with lavender feathers and a still heart. 3 Snow ice bitter wind the body of love. 4 Where two boots labored yesterday across the snowdrifted pasture today each boothole is an offertory of bright seeds bittersweet yellowbirch hemlock pine thistle burning unconsumed. 5 Stronger than destiny is pain and in the leaf the marvelous venature is stronger and in the year the last morsel of pancake of the forty-third breakfast is stronger. 6 Caught in the briary stars a lunar scrap blurred like paper flickering in a gale carrying away a scarcely remembered poem of a summer night. 7 Twenty-two degrees below zero and only the blade of meadow like a snowpetal or foil of platinum to defend the house against the glistening mountain and the near unwinking moon. 8 Morning ice on the window opaque as beaten silver while the poet in his ninefootsquare hut stamps rhythmically breathing out plume after plume of warmth and the stove nibbles a few frozen sticks. 9 In the snowy woods of morning the new deer tracks run cross and criss and circle among snowapparelled spruces and gray maples telling of revels by night of joy and delight and happiness beyond any power of consciousness although the small green pellets mean a hard diet. 10 The tamarack with needles lost and a thousand curled-up twigs like dead birdsfeet takes the snow greedily and in snatches to cover its misshapen nakedness. 11 A winter's tale is told in rumors of snow sneaping winds the frazil flux of identities tardy recognitions the living stones. 12 Think not of chaste snow always nor of crystalline coldness think of spruce boughs like the swordblade breasts of negresses and of the bull mountain humped over the white soft valley and of stags raging down the rutting wind and of northern passion crackling like naked trumpets in the snow under the blazing aurora. 13 The song of the gray ninepointed buck contains much contains many contains all a whole north for example the sweet sharp whistling of the redpolls caught overhead in the branches of the yellow birch like leaves left over from autumn and at night the remote chiming of stars caught in the tines of his quiet exaltation. 14 The arctic owl moved across the snowsmooth meadow to the dark balsam without sound without wingbeat more quiet than a fish more effortless than the gliding seed as if it were a white thought of love moving moving over the pasture to home. 15 Five jays discuss goodandevil in a white birch like five blue fingers playing a guitar. 16 Eons gone by the sea in its huge stress hissed among these promontories now stilled in the frozen whirl and floodtide of the snow. 17 Like a frozen lake the sky in the bitterest twilight cracks and rays of a black elm rising a spray of limbs reveal the longdrowned lurid moon. 18 The frozen brook sprawls in sunlight a tree of glass uprooted. 19 Cold hunger tripped her but her years held her downfallen in this snow hollow this small death valley where small beaks and talons will slowly chip her frozen being though in the snow desert she will not bleach and her eyes will stay soft and beautiful a long long time in the winter light and she will modestly wear her genteel tatters of old flesh and fur. 20 Snow buntings whirling on a snowy field cutglass reflections on a ceiling. 21 The spaniel flies with his ears across the snow carrying a deer's legbone in his jaws the bone flops threejointedly and the little hoof dances delicately in the snow. 22 The window the icicle the gleaming moon when the lamplight fails. 23 Night is a cauldron of boiling snow and the highway where headlights cringe seethes with a furious froth and melts away. 24 This wind this screaming parrot this springing wolf this down fall this ab solute extinc tion this deton ating godhead this wind this. 25 Blizzard trampling past has left the birches bent as in humiliation the soft scotch pines laid down as in subjection the beeches snapped at the top as in a reign of terror the balsams scarred but upright as in the dignity of suffering and all the woods in sorrow as if the world meant something. 26 Pale dawnlight spooks the mist and the valley glimmers and higher behind this mountain whitely rises a farther peak in remote majesty a presence silent and unknown and gone by noon. 27 Harlequin is said to assimilate himself to a condition of animal grace let him study the forehoof of the pinto searching for grass in the snowy pasture. 28 In cold the snow leaps and dances lightly over the earth but in thaw the sullen fingers of snow heavily cling to each stalk and to every stone. 29 Tracks of the snowshoe rabbit across the snow are a ridiculous ominous alphabet of skulls. 30 The brook has holes in its cover this morning where the black water flows rippling menacing under the snow which mounds in untouched purity except where threaded prints of the mink delicately deathly stop to drink. 31 Snow comes bits of light flake from the sky day breaks whirling in early night. Beginning with the palest and softest lavender deepening downward murex purpure arras of old brocade kingly loveliest hues imaginable snow blending the naked hardwood maples beeches birches forests called green in summer now this unbelievable intricacy shaded purple gray hanging wavering trembling over the valley this is the wintering mountain. 33 Heavy gloves or better mittens the north silencing savoring and saving that lewdword finger. 34 After the thaw after the illusion cold comes again returning changed in aspect a great body of death and inertia a corpse flung down a whale perhaps gray and still and immense crushing everything day becomes hard and silent night stiffens heaving to support the weight while the woods groan and the soft snow turns metallic barren and brittle the house creaks under the burden in mindless suffering and its nails burst out with a sound of cracking bones moon sets in afternoon jays huddle say nothing and endure. 35 Sky like fishblood deprecative lurid thin evening blush on the mountain and here the foreground very near a sheen vitrescent snowcrust and reflected light thin lurid and deprecative fish blood. 36 Gunmetal snow icecolored sky granitic meadow sullen noon stunted yellowed loplimbed pine flayed birch elm decorated with empty nests poverty hunger red fingers retracting in splayed gloves dead sun gray hair poverty poverty. 37 Wet fire it turns out is better than no fire. 38 Sky yellow sky wet sky reeky sky lax some god's old diaper. 39 When some amazonian indians for whom all experience had been degrees of heat were given a hunk of ice to touch they said it's not the eskimo child that tumbled on the other hand into the fire did not say it was cold nevertheless brazil brazil thy foolishness is also a kind of beauty. 40 The day the brook went out was still midwinter locked in zodiacal fastness yet rain fell and fell in fact so much the snow turned green and the water in the brook covered the ice like urine until at one crack the whole damned thing let go ice and muddy water trees stones bits of lumber snow like a racketing express through a local stop and then subsided leaving the banks dark and dirty raw and torn with new patterns of rocks looking unfamiliar what a purgation it was wild and beautiful and the result wasn't bad either all told for now the brook is rising again after the long icebound repression singing a midwinter rebel song. 41 Lover of balsam lover of white pine o crossbill crossbill cracking unseen with of all things scissors seeds seeds a fidget for ears enpomped in the meadow's silence silence a crackling thorn aflame in the meadow's cold cold. 42 i n f o e Snow's downstrokes climb softly up the c r. 43 Lichen and liverwort laurel and brome lightened the gravamen of old stones a cellarhole far in foliate woods a dry cistern where sweet water stood a doorstone to nothing that summer entwined softly and now drowned in the snow. 44 Astigmatism breaks the crescent moon into two images set asymmetrically so that they cross in the upper third like two scimitars flung down at rest on the sahara. 45 In freshfallen snow marks of pad and paw and even partridge claw go delicately and distinct straight as a string of beads but marks of a heeled boot waver shuffle wamble ruckle the snow define a most unsteady line then spell it out once so death knowledge being heady it hath not the beasts' beauty goeth tricksy and ploddy and usually too damn wordy but drunken or topsyturvy gladhanding tea'd or groovy it arriveth it arriveth o you pretty lady. 46 Lichen is a hardy plant hardy hardy taking sustenance from the granite ledge nouriture from the dead elm bole icy plant hoar plant living kin to rime the north plant flower of death poverty and resolution. 47 On Lincoln's birthday the forest bound in fifty degrees of frost stirs tentatively with a creaking here and there in the new strength of the noticeably higher sun. 48 Four greens the poplar trunk the lichen on the poplar trunk the shadow of the poplar over the snow the vanished leaves of the poplar fluttering all across the sky. 49 Under the hill a winter twilight darkens to evening colorlessly without sunset and yet the birches leaping higher across the way cry pink cry lavender cry saffron the instant the darkness freezes them. 50 When conditions of frost and moisture are just right the air is filled with thousands and thousands of points of light like the fireflies come back only tinier and much more brilliant as if the fireflies had ghosts to haunt a february night. 51 Three sixteen seventy-nine five hundred ten thousand a million a milliard three a snowsquall aged winter's tantrum in the sun. 52 Small things hardest to believe redpoll snatching drops from an icicle. 53 Layer upon layer late winter snow a dobos torte compact crusts and fillings in a cut snowbank counting the rings of all winter's storms and thaws like a tree grown in one season to which level a boot will sink depends on the resistance and tensility of each stratum woe to him who steps where sun blared hotly in january he will go in floundering go in to his chicken neck woe woe. 54 In late winter cold nights and warm days bring the untimely harvests bright pails and smoke in the sugarbush and the snow known as cornsnow on the mountain whining under the skis like scratchfeed plunging in the chute. 55 The eye of the hut sheds tears musically from the eye of the hut glass tears fall the tears of the hut shatter and trickle musically away the hut musically is weeping from the eye of the hut glass tears fall and shatter musically all day. 56 Where the snow bank leans let april waken let dishevelment rise from covert crocus and violet rise Persephone lift hand to first light narrowing lashes moist from lethe dewpetaled diaphane let the dogtooth following fasten in bractlet jaws sop of the yellow blossom and let grasses rise there unbinding anemone arbutus and lethargy and the dark sward of dreams where the snowbank leans. 57 One day music begins everywhere in the woods unexpectedly water water dripping from fir boughs spilling from ledges singing unexpectedly as when a woman sleeping speaks a strange word or a name so winterfolk the chickadees give over harshness for a kind of carol and the poet appears emerges brushing the mist from his shoulders amused and yawning tasting the snowwater crumbling a bit of tanbark in his teeth water water the pools and freshets wakening earth glistening releasing the ways of the words of earth long frozen. AFTERWORD: WHAT THE POET HAD WRITTEN . . . and sun the blear sun straggled forever on the horizon an unvarying scrutiny around around as they limped and stumbled holding each other against the wind over the ice that crumbled under them in the tremors of unseen currents and the compass plunging and rearing the sun the livid sun smeared in the wind watching watching never relenting till exhaustion inundated them yet they slept with their eyes open clinging together just as they walked often with their eyes shut hand in hand and fell at last tripped on their destination their sextant snagged their compass wild with incomprehension and they looked over the sides of the world The sun the bloated sun ever on the horizon ballooning and they shuddered and turned to each other and then dropped down their plumbline under them and payed out its knots hand over hand to the end to fifteen hundred fathoms and felt the plummet still swinging in the void . . . . . . nothing they were nothing afloat on nothing frozen by the winds of nothing under the meaningless glare of nothing's eye there where the compass points down there where the needle turns in . . . . . . why had they come so far what had led them drawn them into the remoteness and the hostility of north what did north mean and why why was one of them black and the other white these were the points in doubt There in confrontation they gave over the last dissemblings and the last nostalgias nothing against nothing yet more than that their infinitesimal nothing against the nothing of all the nothing of the real and in this giddiness they became at last the objectivists They drew back not in fear for fear had consumed itself but as the painter retreats from his canvas and so they saved themselves now seeing how this was the only virtue the withdrawing mind that steadies before reality and they turned slowly together through the whole arc of absurdity with outstretched hands bestowing cold benediction on the north and then sank down Another confrontation murdered them as they peered in each other's eyes . . . . . . and saw nothing nothing Oh in the low guttural inner voice they proclaimed the misery and destitution of nothing . . . . . . and saw nothing except yes this is the object nothing except the other's returning gaze which each knew also saw nothing And in this likeness this scrap of likeness that contained their likelihood they arose once more calmly the tall twin centers of compassion in the wide field of cold and horror And the sun the huge sun circled around them . . . . . . they came back trudging in love and hardship while the sun took a month to set cowering lidless on the extremity of the ice floe where they crouched Aurora flickered and mounted pale brightening caparisons of yellow and green falling fluttering swaying in such majestic movements that that elemental silence pealed with trumpets and they truly listened with their eyes Did they then see with their ears the changing counterpoints of wind and snow the purity of whiteness modulating everywhere in dunes and fastnesses and cascades Reality gladdened them and all the more when the astonished walrus fell off his seat backwards whopping the sea and they smote their knees and wallowed in the snow . . . . . . north is a horror from which a horror grows a purity and fervor to which in opposition an equal purity and fervor supervene north is the latitude of the near remote lying beyond hope and beyond despair lying in destination where the compass points down the needle turns in where the last breath of meaning is borne away on the cold wind north is the meaninglessness of beauty uncaused in the complete object auroral flickerings on the eternal snows the eye swimming in the mind's deluge the blue mountain floating on emptiness the shadow of the white bear gliding underfoot north is the vacancy that flowers in a glance wakening compassion and mercy and lovingkindness the beautiful dew of the sea rosmarine the call crying in silence so distant so small and meeting itself in its own silence forever north is north is the aurora north is deliverance emancipation . . . . . . north is nothing . . . Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LOOKING EAST IN THE WINTER by JOHN HOLLANDER WINTER DISTANCES by FANNY HOWE WINTER FORECAST by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN AT WINTER'S EDGE by JUDY JORDAN CHAMBER MUSIC: 34 by JAMES JOYCE I'VE NEVER SEEN SUCH A REAL HARD TIME BEFORE' by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION' by HAYDEN CARRUTH A POST-IMPRESSIONIST SUSURRATION FOR THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER by HAYDEN CARRUTH |
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