The Snow Man / Wallace Stevens

       
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 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.

~~
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), 1921
from Harmonium, 1923

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Wallace Stevens biography

"The Snow Man," read by Tom O'Bedlam