Astonishing that our first measurable snow of the winter is coming so late, today, January 12. In honor of its beauty, its stillness, its hush– is there any time more quiet than when snow is falling?– for my first daily daily grace we will go a bit long, and share one of my favorite snow poems, from both a favorite collection and a favorite poet, the great Yves Bonnefoy.
This is from a short book of poems, Début et fin de la neige, or The Beginning and the End of the Snow, written during a winter in residence at Williams College and published in 1991. He would return to Williams a number of times and as I understand it has a deep affinity for the place. His snow poems, as I call them, are achingly beautiful hymns to the ephemeral, mutable nature of snow, of words, of time and space.
In November 1995 a friend and I drove over the mountains to hear Bonnefoy read at Williams. The moon was full, the leaves down, the evening held a magic and a mystery that remain with me still. Bonnefoy is a poet of magic and mystery as well whose mysticism subtly and quietly inhabits his work– and he is a renowned art critic as well as poet. O Magnum Mysterium and a Giacometti sculpture both seem kindred spirits.
I had the good fortune to meet Bonnefoy, slight of stature but not of presence, with majestic white hair and eyes so alive, that night, and he signed my copy, dating it in a graceful hand 9-11-1995, European style. I was so grateful he spelled my oft-mangled first name correctly, and yet was not in the least surprised– she was a pagan goddess of poetry, after all, deeply entwined in the natural world. For a poet of his acuity and sensitivity, I would have expected nothing less.
Mutable time. A decade later my son, who was seven when I went to hear Bonnefoy read, would be an entering freshman at Williams. And two decades later I have the pleasure to read these snow poems to the young men in my French classes, third through sixth forms– you’d think they might resist, but in fact every time I pull out the book and begin to read a hush falls over the room. Like that of falling snow.
LE JARDIN
Il neige.
Sous les flocons la porte
Ouvre enfin au jardin
De plus que le monde.
J’avance. Mais se prend
Mon écharpe à du fer
Rouillé, et se déchire
En moi lӎtoffe du songe.
THE GARDEN
It is snowing.
Beneath the flakes the door
Opens finally onto the garden
That is more than the world.
I walk on. But my scarf
Catches on a rusted
Fence, and the fabric
Of dreams tears within me.