Request

[imaginaaation.livejournal.com]

Hello! Does anyone know any poems that make explicit references to the wind? Sorry for the weird request.

Comments

[mkcs.livejournal.com]

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)

The Wind

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you;
But when the leaves hang trembling
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I;
But when the trees bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.

[feathered.livejournal.com]

That was the first poem that popped into my head! My grandmother used to have a needlepoint version of it hanging in her bathroom and I think I memorized it as soon as I learned to read--it was all there was to look at.

To the OP: Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind (http://www.bartleby.com/106/275.html)" is probably the greatest wind poem out there, at least if you like romantic effusions. I love this stanza:

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable!—if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision,—I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.

[mkcs.livejournal.com]

Alan Curnow's poem 'Wild Iron' is about the wind, and mentions it, too.

[sandokai.livejournal.com]

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
-when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
-whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it's they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn't; blow death to was)
-all nothing's only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live

-- e. e. cummings

[sandokai.livejournal.com]

Also, I bet a lot of sea poems would

[bemkah.livejournal.com]

The Wind
by Robert Louis Stevenson

I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies' skirts across the grass

Oh wind, a blowing all day long,
Oh wind, that sings so loud a song!

I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all

Oh wind, a blowing all day long!
Oh wind, that sings so loud a song!

O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?

O wind, a blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!

[bemkah.livejournal.com]

Oooh, and this one, too:

North Wind
by Debbie Ouellet

Stepmother’s-breath
hissing through barren boughs
dispensing discontent,
cold as a witch’s kiss.

Scandalmonger of the fields,
grips ragweed by the forelock
to lay across the line
and beat away the dirt.

Hickory switch, finger wagging
at a giggle of snowflakes
leapfrogging through ochre fields
and playing knock-knock—

upon her parlor door.

my favorite

[elsabeta.livejournal.com]

Small Song, by A.R. Ammons

The reeds give way to the wind
and give the wind away.

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

<< http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrysearch.poems.html?query=wind >>

<< http://www.poets.org/search.php/fs/1/prmAuthor/+/prmMediaTitle/+/prmKeyword/wind/prmFormID/0/prmMovementID/0/prmThemeID/0 >>

a brief mention of the wind...

[ex-allenb.livejournal.com]

The First Dream - Billy Collins

The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning

as the others stood around the fire
draped in the skins of animals
talking to each other only in vowels,
for this was long before the invention of consonants.

He might have gone off by himself to sit
on a rock and look into the mist of a lake
as he tried to tell himself what had happened,
how he had gone somewhere without going,

how he had put his arms around the neck
of a beast that the others could touch
only after they had killed it with stones,
how he felt its breath on his bare neck.

Then again, the first dream could have come
to a woman, though she would behave,
I suppose, much the same way,
moving off by herself to be alone near water,

except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,

you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.

[bookbatkat.livejournal.com]

I think this one is anonymous... Just a wee poem but nice.


O western wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!

[lifeisacabaret.livejournal.com]

Wind - Shinkichi Takahashi

Give it words,
Stick limbs on it,
You won't alter essence.
Whereas the wind-

I'll live gently
As the wind, flying
Over the town,
My chest full of sparrows.