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April 4: David Young’s “The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon”
A poem from David Young’s 2000 collection At the White Window brings us this versatile poet in one of his many possible guises—in this case, courting the stillness, silence, and openness to loss which usher in something entirely other. Such surprising gifts are found throughout Young’s recent “New and Selected” volume, Field of Light and Shadow, which collects his work across more than 40 years.
The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon
Someone was reading in the back,
two travelers had gone somewhere,
maybe to Chicago,
a boy was out walking, muffled up,
alert on the frozen creek,
a sauce was simmering on the stove.
Birds outside at the feeder
threw themselves softly
from branch to branch.
Suddenly I did not want my life
to be any different.
I was where I needed to be.
The birds swirled in the dusk.
The boy came back from the creek.
The dead were holding us up
the way the ice held him,
helping us breathe the way
air helps snowflakes swirl and fall.
And the sadness felt just right,
like a still and moving wave
on which the sun shone brilliantly.
Learn more about Field of Light and Shadow by David Young
Download the broadside: “The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon”
9 Responses to “April 4: David Young’s “The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon””
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Knopf's Poem-A-Day 2011
April 1: The opening lines of Amy Tan's "I Love a Broad Margin"April 2: Philip Levine's "Unholy Saturday"
April 3: Deborah Digges's "The Coat"
April 4: David Young's "The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon"
April 5: W.S. Merwin's "The Folding Cliffs"
April 6: Cynthia Zarin's "Late Poem"
April 7: Leonard Cohen's "These Heroics"
April 8: Marge Piercy's "Wellfleet Shabbat"
April 9: Anthony Hecht's "Devotions of a Painter"
April 10: Emily Dickinson Letters
April 11: Kevin Young's "Ash Wednesday"
April 12: Edward Hirsch's "Happiness Writes White"
April 13: Amy Clampitt's "Green"
April 14: Walt Whitman's "The Artilleryman’s Vision"
April 15: Wallace Stevens's "A Dove in the Belly"
April 16: James Merrill's "The Candid Decorator"
April 17: Emily Brontë's "No coward soul is mine"
April 18: Julia Hartwig's "Yet We Desire It above All"
April 19: Kenneth Koch's "To My Fifties"
April 20: Stephen Sondheim's "Green Finch and Linnet Bird"
April 21: Stan Rice's "Tornado at Night"
April 22: Kwon Homun's "Two Poems On Fishing"
April 23: Franz Wright's "Rooms"
April 24: Brooks Haxton’s “Three Lilies”
April 25: C.P. Cavafy's "The Mirror in the Entrance"
April 26: W. B. Yeats's "Down by the Salley Gardens"
April 27: Peter Davison's "The Level Path"
April 28: Sharon Olds's "True Love"
April 29: Langston Hughes's "Daybreak in Alabama"
April 30: Farewell, with poems by Jane Hirshfield and Simon Armitage
Knopf's Poem-A-Day 2010
April 1: Edward Hirsch’s “Self-portrait”April 2: Marge Piercy’s “Seven Horses”
April 3: Dan Chiasson’s “Banquette” and “Next”
April 4: Marie Ponsot’s “Transport”
April 5: Alexander Neubauer’s Poetry in Person, featuring Derek Walcott
April 6: Mark Strand’s “Mirror”
April 7: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Spring”
April 8: Philip Levine’s “MY FATHERS, THE BALTIC”
April 9: Vera Pavlova’s “A Remedy for Insomnia”
April 10: Stan Rice’s “The Fragment of Statue”
April 11: Marina Tsvetayeva’s “Poems Grow”
April 12: Kevin Young’s “EYES + EGGS [1983]“
April 13: Janusz Szuber’s “About a Boy Stirring Jam”
April 14: Frank O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”
April 15: Franz Wright’s "My Pew"
April 16: Mary Jo Salter’s “Welcome to Hiroshima”
April 17: Yehuda Halevi’s “A man in your fifties—and you still would be young?”
April 18: Langston Hughes’s “Black Workers” and “Black Dancers”
April 19: W. S. Di Piero’s “In Our Room”
April 20: Robert Wrigley’s “Kissing a Horse”
April 21: Sharon Olds’s “When He Came for the Family” and “The Signal”
April 22: Irving Feldman’s “Stretched Out at Length”
April 23: W.S. Merwin’s “The Furrow”
April 24: David Lehman’s “Poem in the Manner of a Jazz Standard”
April 25: John Keats’s “This Living Hand”
April 26: Laurie Sheck’s A Monster’s Notes
April 27: Garrett Hongo’s “Volcano House”
April 28: Wallace Stevens’s “Large Red Man Reading”
April 29: Izumi Shikibu’s love poems
April 30: Deborah Digges's "Write a Book a Year"
Knopf's Poem-a-Day 2009
April 1: Half Moon, Small Cloud by John UpdikeApril 2: Going Back to Bed by J.D. McClatchy
April 3: Like Giving to a Blind Man Eyes by Ruth Padel
April 4: Waiting On Elvis, 1956 by Joyce Carol Oates
April 5: Exile’s Child by D. Nurkse
April 6: A Summer Outing by Du Fu
April 7: Touch-Me-Nots by Jill Bialosky
April 8: Sweet Voices and Voices by C.P. Cavafy
April 9: On the Jetty by C.P. Cavafy
April 10: Fragment on Dissembling by Lucie Brock-Broido
April 11: Page From the Koran by James Merrill
April 12: Spring Song II by Jean Garrigue
April 13: Ode to Pepper Vinegar by Kevin Young
April 14: Greeter of Souls by Deborah Digges
April 15: You’re Beautiful by Simon Armitage
April 16: Two Short Poems by Mark Strand
April 17: To See My Mother by Sharon Olds
April 18: Wallace Stevens and Donald Justice
April 19: Robert Lowell’s Poetry Class by Stephanie Hemphill
April 20: Storm by Brooks Haxton
April 21: A Good List by Brad Leithauser
April 22: The Pond by Jim Powell
April 23: Impressions of Africa by Kenneth Koch
April 24: Notes For Sixtieth Wedding Anniversary by Jane Mayhall
April 25: Some Playthings by John Hollander
April 26: There is No City that Does Not Dream by Anne Michaels
April 27: Description of Her Eyes by Franz Wright
April 28: Some Different Kinda Books by Sapphire
April 29: The Mistake by Jack Gilbert
April 30: Creeper and Fine Point by John Updike
May 1: Written Late at Night by Janusz Szuber
For the moment that I was reading this I didn’t want my life to be any different, either.
I tried to download the broadside, keep getting an “access denied” page on Scribed. I’ve never been too fond of Scribed in the first place, but I’m not blaming this on them… it’s obviously that someone sent out an incorrect link or has forgotten to make the item public at the correct time.
“The House . ..” has a nice feel to it. Easy to relate to.
The link to the broadside doesn’t allow access.
Wonderful, wonderful poem!
Wistfully hopeful.
David Young’s poem “The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon” echoes the brilliant silence of a perfect winter afternoon. When a moment and its fledgling thoughts are captured as Mr. Young has done, then all living, struggling to survive and even dying has an ideal place in our hearts. His poem takes me back to another cold winter’s day.
Christmas holiday vacation found my young and eager, trigger finger itching to do that, which made us human a long time ago. A shiny black Daisy Air Rifle was slung over my shoulder as I looked in vain for a target on the wing. The small pond at the end of our country village street often had small patches of open water that birds would visit during the brisk New England winter. A warm deep spring fed that pond; even a cold Nor’easter couldn’t freeze it completely. Nothing but nothing moved down there though. The quiet stillness was my only prize.
Later at home, I chanced to see a small sparrow shivering on a tree branch in my back garden. Prey, I thought. It was an easy shot from my back porch, but Dad saw me down the bird, and stopped me in my tracks as I scurried toward my quarry.
“So you killed a defenseless bird.”
“Yea, did you see that; one shot from a hundred feet. Good shooting wasn’t it?”
“It might have been good for you, but what about the bird?” He said with a look that told me I was in trouble. “Go in the garage, get the pickaxe and a shovel, then give the poor creature a decent burial.”
“But Dad the ground’s frozen solid.”
In his crisp laconic style, he said, “Just do it; learn what humanity is all about.”
I never fired a rifle since. The silence between those pickaxe blows and thoughts that laid the motionless, warm bird to rest resound in my memory.
R.L.L.
JM and LuAnn: We’ve updated the Scribd link in the post above to one that might work for everyone. Cheers!
Thanks! I was able to access the broadside and add it to my collection.