After suffering through the brutal heat wave that sat intractably on New York last weekend, these 90-degree days are a relief. Still, I've had enough of the rattle of air conditioning and of nights sleeping on top of the sheets. I find myself lying awake yearning for some of the sweet, cold plums that William Carlos Williams left in the icebox, wishing I could invoke the cold as Shakespeare did in As You Like It, "Blow, blow, thou winter wind."
So here, for all of you fellow summer sufferers, are four very cold poems that might help you imagine some relief from the heat (and distract you from the fact that it isn't even August).
In a letter to his friend Benjamin Bailey, John Keats famously wrote that he was certain of the truth of the imagination. And you can't help but feel a real chill in the opening lines of his poem "Eve of St. Agnes":
St. Agnes' Eve - Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.
And how could one think of cold poems without Robert Frost coming to mind -- last name aside, he was a great poet of winter. In the middle of summer, his poem "Dust of Snow" is particularly striking.
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
Wallace Stevens' poem "The Snow Man" captures the cold and emptiness of winter both in the landscape and in the human mind.
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.
Finally, you might meditate on this haiku by Matsuo Basho, a Japanese master of the form. As with all great haiku, it resonates well beyond its three lines.
Awakened at midnight
by the sound of the water jar
cracking from the ice
Now, so long as we don't wake up to the sound of our AC unit cracking, we just might make it to September.
Feel free to add your own cold poems in the comments section below.
Winter Poems – A Collection of Classic and New Poems for Winter
Blow on high,
dance now crystal snow
Light the painted sky
touch the Earth below
Shimmering stars,
gentle flakes descend from heaven
Wisps of god-wrought joy
their blessings now are given
Fall so fair,
Heaven's boldest wings brought low
Blow on high
fly now crystal snow
Exhale once more,
the night now so alive.
Ghostly breath entwined below
above, a glorious sky
Snow globe scene,
a moment's grace suspended
Crystalline dreams
within a world so splendid
Blow on high,
fill me crystal snow
Embrace the glimmering trees
and wake my slumbering soul!
~KSF
behind you, like the winter that's just past.
For among the winters is one so endlessly winter
that your heart, if you overwinter, can survive it.
-- Rilke
Moronoxy
Air condition
Winter proxy.
Walking home
the field white and barren
as the moon,
bathed in cold light.
My boots squeak in the snow
leaving tracks for spring.
The road blurred with drifts.
Skeletal trees
show me home.
A barn bleats
breath from huddled sheep.
The sawmill burner throws
sky sparks--
temporary stars--
the moon too bright
for real stars.
Why do I remember
the steppe now with childhood
so far back,
think of the moon
before man walked it,
think of the Oregon steppe,
cold space, the dog, warm house?
How you loved the moon
and hated snow.
I left you without a choice
beneath the snow bathed
in the moon--
your life always a cold
compromise.
for this guy who's old
and handed his keys
to the mortgage companies