Winter Remembered, John Crowe Ransom

Just read some Ransom yesterday--very impressed.


Winter Remembered
John Crowe Ransom

Two evils, monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:
A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,
And in the wood the furious winter blowing.

Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks,
And past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter,
I glowed like them, the simple burning sticks,
Far from my cause, my proper heat and center.

Better to walk forth in the frozen air
And wash my wound in the snows; that would be healing:
Because my heart would throb less painful there,
Being caked with cold, and past the smart of feeling.

And where I walked, the murderous winter blast
Would have this body bowed, these eyeballs streaming,
And though I think this heart's blood froze not fast
It ran too small to spare one drop for dreaming.

Dear love, these fingers that had known your touch,
And tied our separate forces first together,
Were ten poor idiot fingers not worth much,
Ten frozen parsnips hanging in the weather.

Not as I'd envisioned.

Last night, well after most people were in bed asleep (including my roommates), I realized I was hungry. I wanted to stir up more of my zucchini saute dish, but I was afraid that the sound of cooking would wake others in the house. However, I'd previously baked after midnight, which didn't cause any disruptions in their sleep cycles. Also, the idea of baking the zucchini sounded scrumptious at that moment.

So I prepared the veggies, stirred everything together, topped it with marinara sauce and cheese and set the dish in the oven. What I hadn't counted on was the fact that I eyeballed the amount of the ingredients, including the spices--the garlic powder in particular.

While I was online, pondering whether scents influenced what one dreamt of, one of my roommates came out and made mention of the smell. He put on the fan above the stove, which again I was worried about in terms of sound. But the fan was fairly quiet that far away from the kitchen, and within 20 minutes the fragrance of garlic had dissipated significantly.

Lesson learned.

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