Poetry: Ice Storm

Ice Storm
–Jane Kenyon
From Oth­er­wise: New and Select­ed Poems

For the hem­locks and broad-leafed evergreens
a beau­ti­ful and pre­car­i­ous state of being…
Here in the sub­urbs of New Haven
nature, unre­strained, lops the weak­er limbs
of shrubs and trees with a sense of aesthetics
that is prac­ti­cal and sinister…

I am a guest in this house.
On the bed­side table Good House­keep­ing, and
A Niet­zsche Read­er… The oth­ers are still asleep.
The most painful long­ing comes over me.
A long­ing not of the body…

It could be for beauty—
I mean what Keats was pant­i­ng after,
for which I love and hon­or him;
it could be for the promis­es of God;
or for obliv­ion, nada; or some con­di­tion even more
extreme, which I intu­it, but can’t quite name.