Tuesday, May 24, 2011

"Desert Places" by Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past
And the ground covered smooth in snow
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.


The woods around have it - it is theirs
All animals are smotehred in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.


And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow

With no expression, nothing to express.


They cannot scare me with the empty spaces
Between stars  - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so mucn nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
--Robert Frost


The poet I can't and won't get away from. I think of this as Robert Frost's answer to the Isaac Azimov and Arthur C. Clarke. And his loneliness, the loneliness he feels and sees and claims, that loneliness is something he has accepted and made his piece with. I like the bravado in the last stanza: "They cannot scare me." The words of someone who isn't vulnerable to someone else's fear anymore.

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