Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SUGARING, by RAYMOND HOLDEN First Line: A man may think wild things under the moon Last Line: So to be very near her when she stirs. Alternate Author Name(s): Holden, Raymond Peckham Subject(s): Trees; Winter | ||||||||
A man may think wild things under the moon -- In March when there is a tapping in the pails Hung breast-high on the maples. Though you sink To boot-tops only in the uncrusted snow, And feel last autumn's leaves a short foot down, There will be one among the men you meet To say the snow lies six feet level there. "Not here!" you say; and he says, "In the woods" -- Implying woods that he knows where to find. Well, such a moon may be miraculous, And if it has the power to make one man Believe a common February snow The great storm-wonder he would talk about For years if once he saw it, there may be In the same shimmering sickle over the hill Vision of other things for other men. The moon again Playing tonight with vapors that go up And out into the silver. The brown sap works Its foamy bulk over the great log fire. Colors of flame light up a man, who kneels With sticks upon his arm, and in his face A grimace of resistance to the glow. All that is burning is not under here Boiling the early sap -- I wonder why. It is as calm as a dream of paradise Out there among the trees, where runnels make The only music heard above the sway Of branches fingering the leaning moon. And yet a man must go, when the sap has thickened, Up and away to sleep a tired sleep, And dream of dripping from a rotting roof Back into sap that once was rid of him. I wonder why, I wonder why, I wonder... Close the iron doors and let the fire die, And the faint night-wind blow through the broken walls. The sugar thickens, and the moon is gone, And frost threads up the singing rivulets. I am going up the mountain toward the stars, But I should like to lie near earth tonight-- Earth that has borne the furious grip of winter And given a kind of birth to beauty at last. Look! ---the old breath thrills through her once again And there will be passion soon, shaking her veins And driving her spirit upward till the buds Burst overhead, and swallows find the eaves Of the sugar-house untroubled by the talk Of men gone off with teams to mend the roads. I think I shall throw myself down here in the snow So to be very near her when she stirs. | 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 |
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