Om on the Range

The light is almost at its least. Pretty soon the days start getting longer little by little.

This poem by William Carlos Williams is not a particularly happy poem, but it is a beautiful and tender poem. It has a spiritual quality and it is a provocative poem in the sense that it provokes contemplation, if you want it.

'These'

are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man.

The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night

to an empty, windswept place
without sun, stars or moon
but a peculiar light as of thought

that spins a dark fire-
whirling upon itself until,
in the cold, it kindles

to make a man aware of nothing
that he knows, not loneliness
itself-Not a ghost but

would be embraced-emptiness,
despair-(They
whine and whistle) among

the flashes and booms of war;
houses of whose rooms
the cold is greater than can be thought,

the people gone that we loved,
the beds lying empty, the couches
damp, the chairs unused-