Accountability

By William E. Stafford 1914–1993

Cold nights outside the taverns in Wyoming

pickups and big semis lounge idling, letting their

haunches twitch now and then in gusts of powder snow,

their owners inside for hours, forgetting as well

as they can the miles, the circling plains, the still town

that connects to nothing but cold and space and a few

stray ribbons of pavement, icy guides to nothing

but bigger towns and other taverns that glitter and wait:

Denver, Cheyenne.

Hibernating in the library of the school on the hill

a few pieces by Thomas Aquinas or Saint Teresa

and the fragmentary explorations of people like Alfred

North Whitehead crouch and wait amid research folders

on energy and military recruitment posters glimpsed

by the hard stars. The school bus by the door, a yellow

mound, clangs open and shut as the wind finds a loose

door and worries it all night, letting the hollow

students count off and break up and blow away

over the frozen ground.

William Stafford, “Accountability” from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1998 by William Stafford. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

Source: The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 1998)

Biography

"If you have been wondering where the articulate, readable poems have gone in the last third of the 20th century, you might start with [William] Stafford," declares Victor Howes of the Christian Science Monitor. A pacifist and one of "the quiet of the land," as he often describes himself, Stafford is known for his unique method of composition, his soft-spoken voice, and his independence from social and literary expectations. As

Continue reading this biography