Snow by Louis MacNeice

Snow
Louis MacNeice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes—
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands—
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

SELECTED BY SHIRA ERLICHMAN

I think perhaps there is no more radical an act than being awake to the world. If we are awake––open, observant, receptive––revelation can’t help but follow. This is what MacNeice’s Snow teaches me, over and over again, in the decade since I first encountered it. The poem’s premise is as simple and unassuming as its title: watching snow fall outside from the warm indoors. But through MacNeice’s acute and massive attention, the scene reveals (once could say “revelates”––reveal being the root of revelation) ancient human emotions: namely, overwhelm and awe. I can feel MacNeice’s bodily shock at the proliferating abundance of Life, the “spawning,” “bubbling,” “collateral” nature of nature! What could have been a lovely, descriptive, pastoral poem instead becomes a visceral invitation into awe. What else would I come to a poem for?

ABOUT SHIRA ERLICHMAN

Shira Erlichman is a writer, artist & musician, author of poetry collection Odes to Lithium & children’s book Be/Hold: A Friendship Book, & the founder of In Surreal Life, a portable creativity school. She lives in Brooklyn with her wife.