Yvor Winters Poems

God spoke once in the dark: dead sound
in the dead silence. I turned
in my sleep.
      I slept and sank away.
...

I could tell
Of silence where
One ran before
Himself and fell
...

Immeasurable haze:
The desert valley spreads
Up golden river-beds
As if in other days.
...

I was the patriarch of the shining land,
Of the blond summer and metallic grain;
Men vanished at the motion of my hand,
...

Far out of sight forever stands the sea,
Bounding the land with pale tranquillity.
When a small child, I watched it from a hill
...

Beyond the steady rock the steady sea,
In movement more immovable than station,
Gathers and washes and is gone. It comes,
...

I now remembered slowly how I came,
I, sometime living, sometime with a name,
Creeping by iron ways across the bare
...

Impersonal the aim
Where giant movements tend;
Each man appears the same;
...

Reptilian green the wrinkled throat,
Green as a bough of yew the beard;
He bent his head, and so I smote;
...

Who knows
Where my sight goes,
What your sight shows---
Where the peachtree blows?
...