Donald Hall

An old life

Snow fell in the night. At five-fifteen I woke to a bluish Mounded softness where The Honda was. Cat fed and coffee made, I broomed snow off the car And drove to the Kearsarge

A Poet at Twenty

Images leap with him from branch to branch. His eyes Brighten, his head cocks, he pauses under a green bough, Alert. And when I see him I want to hide him somewhere. The other

The Man In The Dead Machine

High on a slope in New Guinea The Grumman Hellcat Lodges among bright vines As thick as arms. In 1943, The clenched hand of a pilot Glided it here Where no one has ever

All winter your brute shoulders strained against collars, padding And steerhide over the ash hames, to haul Sledges of cordwood for drying through spring and summer, For the Glenwood stove next winter, and for

Distressed Haiku

In a week or ten days The snow and ice Will melt from Cemetery Road. I’m coming! Don’t move! Once again it is April. Today is the day We would have been married Twenty-six

Sudden Things

A storm was coming, that was why it was dark. The wind was blowing the fronds of the palm trees off. They were maples. I looked out the window across the big lawn. The

Mount Kearsarge Shines

Mount Kearsarge shines with ice; from hemlock branches Snow slides onto snow; no stream, creek, or river Budges but remains still. Tonight We carry armloads of logs From woodshed to Glenwood and build up

Je Suis une table

It has happened suddenly, By surprise, in an arbor, Or while drinking good coffee, After speaking, or before, That I dumbly inhabit A density; in language, There is nothing to stop it, For nothing

Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, We glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads When a grandfather dies. Then we row for years on

Christmas party at the South Danbury Church

December twenty-first We gather at the white Church festooned Red and green, the tree flashing Green-red lights beside the altar. After the children of Sunday School Recite Scripture, sing songs, And scrape out solos,

Villanelle

Katie could put her feet behind her head Or do a grand plié, position two, Her suppleness magnificent in bed. I strained my lower back, and Katie bled, Only a little, doing what we

White Apples

when my father had been dead a week I woke with his voice in my ear I sat up in bed And held my breath And stared at the pale closed door White apples

The Alligator Bride

The clock of my days winds down. The cat eats sparrows outside my window. Once, she brought me a small rabbit Which we devoured together, under The Empire Table While the men shrieked Repossessing

Wolf Knife

In the mid August, in the second year Of my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winter Almost upon us, Kantiuk and I Attempted to dash the sledge Along Crispin Bay, searching