It hardly seems possible that it's already winter again. Winter is my favorite time of the year. I always hope that it will snow so I can watch the difficult world turn white and innocent. The fireplace makes everything cozy; when I do go outside, I'm bundled up and love the wonderful fresh feeling. Then when I'm sure that a cup of tea would solve a few problems, I go inside, grab a book and lose myself in my favorite place in the world.
We have a terrific issue to close this year, and to introduce it, here is one of my favorite winter poems:
THE CURTAIN
BY HAYDEN CARRUTH
Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and rearing.
We can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-renewing sump of corpse-
flesh.
But in this valley the snow falls silently all day, and out our window
We see the curtain of it shifting and folding, hiding us away in our little house,
We see earth smoothened and beautified, made like a fantasy, the snow-clad trees
So graceful. In our new bed, which is big enough to seem like the north pasture almost
With our two cats, Cooker and Smudgins, lying undisturbed in the southeastern and
southwestern corners,
We lie loving and warm, looking out from time to time. “Snowbound,” we say. We speak
of the poet
Who lived with his young housekeeper long ago in the mountains of the western
province, the kingdom
Of cruelty, where heads fell like wilted flowers and snow fell for many months
Across the pass and drifted deep in the vale. In our kitchen the maple-fire murmurs
In our stove. We eat cheese and new-made bread and jumbo Spanish olives
Which have been steeped in our special brine of jalapeños and garlic and dill and thyme.
We have a nip or two from the small inexpensive cognac that makes us smile and sigh.
For a while we close the immense index of images that is our lives—for instance,
The child on the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico sitting naked in 1966 outside his
family’s hut,
Covered with sores, unable to speak. But of course we see the child every day,
We hold out our hands, we touch him shyly, we make offerings to his implacability.
No, the index cannot close. And how shall we survive? We don’t and cannot and will
never
Know. Beyond the horizon a great unceasing noise is undeniable. The machine,
Like an immense clanking vibrating shuddering unnameable contraption as big as a
house, as big as the whole town,
May break through and lurch into our valley at any moment, at any moment.
Cheers, baby. Here’s to us. See how the curtain of snow wavers and then falls back.