"Winter Poems"

... is the name of this wood engraving by Gerard Brender à Brandis, which hangs above my desk.



And as I sit at my desk, a little like the one in the picture, I, too, look out at snowy boughs. The first real snow of the season has fallen on downtown Toronto. I don't think it will settle long, as impressive as it looks right now.

It's certainly a night to be warm and cosy. And as I drink my tea I'm perusing a book of poems by Wallace Stevens. Here's an appropriate one for tonight.

The Snow Man

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 jupiters 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.