Poetry Magazine
In the Cold Country
We came so trustingly, for love, but these
Lowlands, flatlands, near beneath the sea
Point with their cautionary bones of sand
To exorcize, submerge us; we stay free
Only as mermaids glittering in the waves:
Mermaids of the imagination, young
A spring ago, who know our loveliness
Banished, like fireflies at winter’s breath,
Because none saw; these vines about our necks
We placed in welcome once, but now as wreath
Against the scalpel cold; still cold creeps in
To grow like ivy over our chilling bodies
Into our blood. Now in our diamond dress
We wive only the sequins of the sea.
The lowlands have rejected us. They lie
Athwart the whispering waters like a scar
On a mirage of glass; the dooming land,
Where nothing can take root but frost, has won.
And what of warmth and what of joy? They are
Sequestered elsewhere, southward, where the sun
Speaks. For all our mermaid vigilance
And balance, all goes under; underneath
The land’s gray wave we falter and fall back
To hibernate within the caves of death.
Barbara Howes, “In the Cold Country” from In the Cold Country. Copyright 1954 by Barbara Howes. Reprinted with the permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Source: Poetry (February 1949).
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This poem originally appeared in the February 1949 issue of Poetry magazine
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Poems by Barbara Howes
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Nature, Landscapes & Pastorals, Weather, Seas, Rivers, & Streams, Mythology & Folklore, Fairy-tales & Legends
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