Snow and Snow
Snow is sometimes a she, a soft one. Her kiss on your cheek, her finger on your sleeve In early December, on a warm evening. And you turn to meet her, saying ‘It’s snowing!’ But it is not. And nobody’s there. Empty and calm is the air. Sometimes the snow is a he, a sly one. Weakly he signs the dry stone with a damp spot. Waifish he floats and touches the pond and is not. Treacherous-beggarly he falters, and taps at the window. A little longer he clings to the grass-blade tip Getting his grip. Then how she leans, how furry fox wrap she nestles The sky with her warm, and the earth with her softness. How her lit crowding fairytales sink through the space-silence To build her palace, till it twinkles in starlight — Too frail for a foot Or a crumb of soot. Then how his muffled armies move in all night And we wake and every road is blockaded Every hill taken and every farm occupied And the white glare of his tents is on the ceiling. And all that dull blue day and on into the gloaming We have to watch more coming. Then everything in the rubbish-heaped world Is a bridesmaid at her miracle. Dunghills and crumbly dark old barns are bowed in the chapel of her sparkle, The gruesome boggy cellars of the wood Are a wedding of lace Now taking place.
Snow and Snow - meaning Summary
Snow as Enchantment and Siege
The poem imagines snow in two contrasting forms. As “she,” it is delicate, intimate, and magical, covering the world in softness and turning neglected places into part of a wedding-like spectacle. As “he,” it is furtive and then militaristic, advancing through the night to occupy roads, hills, and farms. Together, these visions show snow as both a transforming beauty and an unstoppable force.
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