First Snow
The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
flitters like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found —
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.
Looking at, and looking through the ordinary, was one of Mary Oliver's gifts. This poem has a tone of breathless wonder, as the poet becomes caught up into one of nature's quietly transformative happenings. The sense of wonder is intensified by the presence of questions seeking answers, and later in the poem, answers seeking questions; but "not a single answer has been found", except it has, or so it feels.
To read this poem through aloud, but quietly and slowly, is to begin to see and feel the miracle of snowfall. Climatologists can better describe the phenomenon in terms of science; but it is the poet who is best equipped to analyse and articulate the power of snowfall to interrogate the subjective impact of snow. The 'white rhetoric' of trillions of falling snowflakes evokes the longings, stirs questions we hadn't thought to ask, and provokes the imagination to see more than is merely visible.
Throughout the poem Oliver uses words that are uncomplicated and which are descriptive of inner responsive feelings as well as the visible phenomenon of snowfall and its pristine aftermath. "Whence such beauty and what the meaning." Oliver's poetry often acknowledges nature's mysteries, with hints at the metaphysical clues of loveliness, beauty, energy and silence.
Once the precipitation has ended, "the silence / is immense, /and the heavens still hold / a million candles..." So the skies of heaven are cleared, and predictably awe inspiring, but the earth beneath is transformed into a magic landscape of beauty, possibility and and surprise. This poem is about quietly satisfied joy in a world where newness is not only possible but made visible in the light of a million candles.
But it is that word "though" that is the poem's hinge that folds the earlier italicised questions to wards a kind of resolution. Not answers to the questions of the metaphysically speculative or aesthetically curious observer. But an answer more humanly resonant, that is felt rather than spoken, experienced rather than described, and that satisfies the human person's longing for wholeness and at-homeness in the world. The questions have assailed the mind and troubled the spirit; the answer is not in the earthquake of argument, or the wind of aggressive enquiry, or in the fire of logic energised by reason - but in the still small voice that can only be heard during a night walk in snowlight. Assailing questions remain with not a single answer found - but
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.
One further thought. Today I spent a couple of hours digging out our car, shovelling snow, clearing pavements, mine and our neighbours'. I have never resented that kind of work, least of all moving snow. There are so many compensations to snow. I have unqualified sympathy with Oliver's attempt at describing a natural spirituality of snowfall upon a landscape. Reading her poem this morning, looking out at a North East blizzard, I'm aware it isn't quite the same as snow gently falling in moonlight. But I guess we all know enough about the entrancing power of snow to sense that Oliver is expressing something of our own questions in search of an answer; and perhaps too pointing to an answer that sends us searching for the questions. Either way, this is a poem in which we overhear the gentle interrogation of the heart, by heart-stopping beauty.
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