I told you the winter would go, love,
I told you the winter would go,
That he'd flee in shame when the south wind came,
And you smiled when I told you so.
You said the blustering fellow
Would never yield to a breeze,
That his cold, icy breath had frozen to death
The flowers, the birds, and trees.

And I told you the snow would melt, love,
In the passionate glance o' the sun;
And the leaves o' the trees, and the flowers and bees,
Would come back again, one by one.
That the great, gray clouds would vanish,

I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.

Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea --
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.

FIRST VOICE.

I thirst, but earth cannot allay
The fever coursing through my veins,
The healing stream is far away­--
It flows through Salem's lovely plains.

The murmurs of its crystal flow
Break ever o'er this world of strife;
My heart is weary, let me go,
To bathe it in the stream of life;

For many worn and weary hearts
Have bathed in this pure healing stream,
And felt their griefs and cares depart,
E'en like some sad forgotten dream.


SECOND VOICE.

"The Word is nigh thee, even in thy heart."

I sometimes wonder if the mighty God
Cares aught about the little deeds of men;
And if their day and time can reach his ken
Or raise their breath above the hungry sod.
Does He who lightly holds th' eternal rod,
Now taut, now loose, the threads of Why and When?
Giving passing heed--or be they one or ten--
To one-time flesh but now the wind-blown clod?

If men can die who never yet knew life,
And, smiling, hold it is no strange affair;
Or live when death were welcome boon of strife,
Torn, broken sheaves the ghostly reapers spare;

I sleep a lot and read St. Thomas Aquinas
Or The Death of God (that's a Protestant book).
To the right the bay as if molten tin,
Beyond the bay, city, beyond the city, ocean,
Beyond the ocean, ocean, till Japan.
To the left dry hills with white grass,
Beyond the hills an irrigated valley where rice is grown,
Beyond the valley, mountains and Ponderosa pines,
Beyond the mountains, desert and sheep.

When I couldn't do without alcohol, I drove myself on alcohol,
When I couldn't do without cigarettes and coffee, I drove myself

People sit numbly at the counter
waiting for breakfast or service.
Today it's Hartford, Connecticut
more than twenty-five years after
the last death of Wallace Stevens.
I have come in out of the cold
and wind of a Sunday morning
of early March, and I seem to be
crying, but I'm only freezing
and unpeeled. The waitress brings
me hot tea in a cracked cup,
and soon it's all over my paper,
and so she refills it. I read
slowly in The New York Times
that poems are dying in Iowa,
Missoula, on the outskirts of Reno,

FOR thee, I shall not die,
Woman of high fame and name;
Foolish men thou mayest slay
I and they are not the same.

Why should I expire
For the fire of an eye,
Slender waist or swan-like limb,
Is't for them that I should die?

The round breasts, the fresh skin,
Cheeks crimson, hair so long and rich;
Indeed, indeed, I shall not die,
Please God, not I, for any such.

The golden hair, the forehead thin,
The chaste mien, the gracious ease,

O woman, shapely as the swan,
On your account I shall not die:
The men you've slain -- a trivial clan --
Were less than I.
I ask me shall I die for these --
For blossom teeth and scarlet lips --
And shall that delicate swan-shape
Bring me eclipse?
Well-shaped the breasts and smooth the skin,
The cheeks are fair, the tresses free --
And yet I shall not suffer death,
God over me!
Those even brows, that hair like gold,
Those languorous tones, that virgin way,
The flowing limbs, the rounded heel
Slight men betray!

I

I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
Theire in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.

These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in the sun the frigid threads
Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves;
The signal moon is zero in their voids.

I see the summer children in their mothers

I

I saw thy form in youthful prime,
Nor thought that pale decay
Would steal before the steps of Time,
And waste its bloom away, Mary!
Yet still thy features wore that light,
Which fleets not with the breath;
And life ne'er look'd more truly bright
Than in thy smile of death, Mary!

II