Leaning against the wind across the paddock ways <br />comes Dan home with forward stoop like a man bent and old, <br />clashes the door in haste as one pursued: 'By Christ, it's cold!' <br />and crooks his fingers to the blaze. <br /> <br />We do not live these days, but each exhausting day <br />unnerved we numbly wait return of life, and must abide <br />the wind, the still beleaguering wind; all voices else outside <br />imperioulsy it has blown away. <br /> <br />Over the bronze-brown paddocks the grass is bowed flat down; <br />along the birdless creek a cold malevolence has passed; <br />a forlorn sparrow clings on the fence against the icy blast, <br />his soft breast feathers loosely blown. <br /> <br />We watch the saplings buffeted without repose, <br />their foliage all on one side, plunging without rest, <br />stems leaning all one way from the assailing west, <br />bending as backs cower from blows. <br /> <br />The hunched cattle no longer feeding dejected stand <br />with dumb endurance, tails to the flogging wind hour after hour; <br />from some far frozen hell of winds a blind and souless power <br />invades and harries all the land. <br /> <br />The Wind! The Wind! It fumbles at the fastened panes, <br />fills, and posseses all, a tyranny without control; <br />ceaseless, changeless, malign, searching into the very soul, <br />the rushing desolation reigns.<br /><br />James Martin Devaney<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/winter-westerlies/
