There's a certain slant of light,
Winter Afternoons --
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes --
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us --
We can find no scar,
But internal difference --
Where the Meanings, are --
Non may teach it -- Any --
'Tis the seal Despair --
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air --
When it comes, the Landscape listens --
Shadows -- hold their breath --
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death --
I counted till they danced so
Their slippers leaped the town --
And then I took a pencil
To note the rebels down --
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig --
And ten of my once stately toes
Are marshalled for a jig!
macaques heard,
but not seen, amid the fog
of Winter hot springs.
with winter at hand,
the last crisp leaves yield
only to stout gales.
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change in mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
No hawk hangs over in this air:
The urgent snow is everywhere.
The wing adroiter than a sail
Must lean away from such a gale,
Abandoning its straight intent,
Or else expose tough ligament
And tender flesh to what before
Meant dampened feathers, nothing more.
Forceless upon our backs there fall
Infrequent flakes hexagonal,
Devised in many a curious style
To charm our safety for a while,
Where close to earth like mice we go
Under the horizontal snow.
in the mountains,
winter always looms nearby:
green hills, or not.
Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.
One bitter winter afternoon --
Locked under skies so low and gray --
The city slowed in cold cocoon
As what verve remained slid away.
And then the clouds, they broke apart,
And frozen souls began to thaw.
But some needed not the sun's kickstart
To free themselves of winter's maw.
What was their secret? I wish I knew.
To be happy sans the skies of blue.
a bright winter day:
thick clouds, in blue skies,
scrape the mountains.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 