Snow In the Suburbs

Taki Katei

Snow in the Suburbs

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eye
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

Thomas Hardy

If I read this poem slowly and deliberately, the scene springs up in my mind's eye, vivid and real. It feels as if I could 

have written it myself, after all, it's merely a line by line description, right? And yet - and yet! Try it yourself. Just try.

Hardy is so good, so very skilled, he makes it feel natural, easy, a simple flow of words. But every sense is included -

sight, sound, hearing, touch - okay, maybe not taste - but there's emotion too, that poor thin cat - tell me you don't 

feel pity for him.