Around the house the banshee hosts
Sob and cry, the sheered ghosts
Of the snowstorm of the year.
One most like them bends to peer
Into the window panes, and sighs:
Is my babe safe? No baby lies
By my side here under the sky.
Did my small son live or die?
And Februarys booming bass
Answers: Go back to your place
Under the pines, and hush your woe.
Your baby lives, young Mary Snow,
Hut his hair now is snowy white.
He's shaving for the dance tonight
Up at the Orange Hall. He will swing
His partners till their eyeballs ring,
Dos-y-dos and allemand right!
Kick up his heels like a boy tonight
To fiddles' squeals in Turkey in the Straw.
He's the livest grandpa ever you saw!
A grandpa!—my little innocent John,
My nursing babe?
Yes, years have gone,
Eighty years, since you nursed him last.
And what have they done, those years that passed,
To the Snow farmhouse, to the Snow name?
Look in the window. All is the same.
The faces have changed, but the folks have not.
There is Mother stirring the pot
Of rabbit stew on a slow fire,
With two small onions, a turnip entire,
Sliced to flakes of the winter moon
So they will merge with rabbit soon,
A teaspoon of pepper, for Snows like bite,
Salt, of cinnamon just a dight.
In go the dumplings that you made,
Thin as rose leaves, soft as suede,
One at a time rill they swell and drown
And turn into something like angel-down!
Beyond the stove Big Boy is grinning,
He's smacking Small Boy's underpinning
For kicking the dominoes over the floor
When he was losing. The Hound's deep snore
Under the stove is the snore you knew.
The rabbit stew's your rabbit stew.
Bachelor Uncle still is there
In later edition, different hair,
And Spinster Aunt with the too-nice curls
That should be on the heads of girls.
Middle Boy's doing arithmetic.
Your baby's babe is whittling a stick
And chewing tobacco, his paunch is fulling.
New edition of Middle Girl's pulling
Molasses taffy and throwing the loops
Round Small Girl's bands. Your boy's wife stoops
Over the cat, forever there.
White Hair still keeps the Boston chair.
The years go by, but little farms stand still.
Go back, Mary Snow, go back to your hill.
The Snow farm is the February farm
You knew and loved so. Nothing can harm
A thing that's lasted well two centuries.
There's still three months of honey for the bees
In the hives. Brown Woodchuck's put his nose
Out and seen shadows, gone back to his doze.
The sap pails hang upon the maple boles.
Grandma's mended all the family holes
In the family socks. The hay will last
The winter out and till the pasture's grassed
With green again. There's cordwood for a year
In the swamp. Sleep, Mary. Never fear.
The years are hard on towns.
Cities pass their prime,
But little farmhouses
Somehow go free of time.
Mothers fade and pass,
Fathers age and gray,
But little farms stay young;
Always the children play.
Only the faces change,
The family does not go,
Love rocks the cradle still
In February's snow.
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