Song

By W. D. Snodgrass 1926–2009

Observe the cautious toadstools

still on the lawn today

though they grow over-evening;

sun shrinks them away.

Pale and proper and rootless,

they righteously extort

their living from the living.

I have been their sort.

See by our blocked foundation

the cold, archaic clay,

stiff and clinging and sterile

as children mold at play

or as the Lord God fashioned

before He breathed it breath.

The earth we dig and carry

for flowers, is strong in death.

Woman, we are the rich

soil, friable and humble,

where all our murders rot,

where our old deaths crumble

and fortify my reach

far from you, wide and free,

though I have set my root

in you and am your tree.

Source: Selected Poems 1957-1987 (1987)

Biography

W. D. Snodgrass is often credited with being one of the founding members of the "confessional" school of poetry, even though he dislikes the term confessional and does not regard his work as such. Nevertheless, his Pulitzer Prize-winning first collection, Heart's Needle, has had a tremendous impact on that particular facet of contemporary poetry. "Like other confessional poets, Snodgrass is at pains to reveal the repressed, . . .

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