Winter Gale
It froze the field
and felled tall trees,
It bred black ice
and bruised blue boulders,
It ensnared trout in streams,
bade them sleep for a season,
It dropped birds from the air
and broke bottles on door-steps.
Day’s disc became pale,
and the dark arrived early;
The ground was as iron,
and the grass grey and sere.
Leaves fell en masse
from lofty boughs,
Blackened at once,
to be borne on bare earth.
Songbirds fell silent,
turned to stone in their sorrows,
Boulders cracked
and boughs exploded.
Wolves cried out
on a wasted day,
Honey-pawed hooded-ones
hid in their hollows.
The beam roved about
with a booming roar,
One way and another
over wide-bosomed Earth;
It infiltered in furrows of frozen soil,
Overturned in an instant,
and tipped with rime.