Smith's Place

THE wind and winter are more bitter here,
Even the fences feel it, and the house
Standing defiant in the windy fields.
The rest of the world’s below these heights,
Not to be seen from here, because
This land stretches for miles around,
Plateau, all high, all bare.

A man might sit upon a rail and look
With pride upon this land, on field and fence,
And even the small and sturdy house, foursquare.
But he lives here who only knows
Fierceness of wintertime and snow,
Silence of nights when like a fox
The frost steals in, and kills.

You would not think a place could be so still,
But if it blows there are no trees to sound,
Nor any kind of passing on the road.
And she who lives here does not speak
To him who lives here, — long gone dry
Of any words that would be worth
The breaking of the silence.

The pattern of the days through many years
Rigidly stretches from the dawn to dark
Bent by the wind and frozen by the cold.
There can be little change from eyes
Which after winter see in spring
Not anything but toil, to eyes that see
Not anything at all.