According to the silence, winter has arrived-
a special kind of winter. I, its inventor,
watch it freeze in calendars and stare
out of clocks. I do not feel its cold.

Across a certain farm evening crows go flying,
intervals of sky that I have seen before,
the bearing of a river: I advance, a wanderer
out of thought country, that serious, quiet place,

Till according to the silence all the light is gone
and according to the dark all wanderers are home

-William Stafford, "Shepherd"


Across the round field under the dark male tower
drift the two horses, the chestnut and the black,
aloof and quiet as two similar clouds -

alike and distant, heads towards the wind,
and the grass a green pool under moving clouds
under the sickle gulls, the screaming grey eyed girls

Only by night around the standing tower
the stallion's white teeth in the brown mare's shoulder
those eight hooves fly like thunder in the wind,
like water falling under the night's drum

-Alex Comfort, "The Lovers"