English followed by une version en français y una versión en español. There are also three Notes after the English version.

Spring is—or used to be?—the season for love poems. But, in fact, this wintry poem was drafted around the same time as, and seems of a pair with, January’s “Please do what you would like to do”- « S’il te plaît, fais ce que tu veux » – «Por favor, haz lo que quieras».

As regards the “or used to be,” I, of course, mean to say nothing here as regards climate change or the United States’s “constitutional crisis,” or other unfortunate things happening in the US or with the help of its current government. But I will at least note that it is hard to imagine the US, with its armies of lawyers, giving up entirely on the rule of law. (And notwithstanding this rule’s longstanding inequities and endemic corruption).

I have been reading about nineteenth-century revolutions, tyrants and dictators, and thus came across a famous line from the British historian G.M. Trevelyan. He referred to the year 1848, with its many European revolutions, as “the turning point at which modern history failed to turn.” One might wish that 2025 prove as inconsequential for the people of the United States.

Meanwhile, in working on the present, apolitical, love poem, I recalled a wonderful line from Henry James’s The American. A woman says to a man who is seeking to win the hand of a friend of hers: “You will think you take generous views of her; but you will never begin to know through what a strange sea of feeling she passed before she accepted you.”

It is worth noting that in the end the woman did not accept him.

English

At the end of a winter afternoon

At the end of a winter afternoon

In a half-renovated kitchen

A woman, a man, just a few feet apart

Books of duets she’d given him

“So when I come to see you we can play together”

Already they’d made attempts.

Now he asks, when are they going . . . , or when would they might?

She talks of all she has to do

Not till summer, if even then

“I’m going to miss you”

He says to a beautiful wordless

Unyielding face

Is she stunned or touched

Annoyed

Impressed?

The fact of his or their connection

Of his or her ability, or inabilities

At the end of this afternoon

Notes

From William Empson’s 1947 “Preface to the Second Edition” of his work of criticism Seven Types of Ambiguity:

[1] I believe that rather little good poetry has been written in recent years, and that, because it is no longer a profession in which ability can feel safe, the effect of writing a good bit of verse has in almost every case been carried through almost as a clinical thing; it was done to save the man’s own sanity. Exceedingly good verse has been written under these conditions in earlier centuries as well as our own, but only to externalize the conflict of an individual. It would not have been sensible to do such hard work unless the man himself needed it.

[2] As I understand it, there is always in great poetry a feeling of generalization from a case which has been presented definitely; there is always an appeal to a background of human experience which is all the more present when it cannot be named. I do not have to deny that the narrower chisel may cut more deeply into the heart. What I would suppose is that, whenever a receiver of poetry is seriously moved by an apparently simple line, what are moving in him are the traces of a great part of his past experience and of the structure of his past judgments.

[3] The source for the quote from Trevelyan is Kenan Malik’s Guardian review of the Cambridge University historian Christopher Clark’s Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849. The link here is to the review.

Français

A la fin d’un après-midi d’hiver

A la fin d’un après-midi d’hiver

Dans une cuisine à demi rénovée

Une femme à quelques mètres d’un homme

La veille, elle lui avait offert des partitions pour des duos

« Afin que lors de ma prochaine visite, nous puissions jouer ensemble »

Ils avaient fait des tentatives

Il lui demande maintenant quand ils allaient . . . , quand ils pourraient

Et elle parle de tout ce qu’elle a à faire

Pas avant l’été, si ce n’est même après

« Tu vas me manquer »

Le visage beau, implacable

Pâle et sans un mot

Est-elle étonnée, touchée

Contrariée

Impressionnée ?

Le fait de son, ou de leur attachement

Capacité, incapacité

A la fin de cet après-midi

Español

Al final de una tarde de invierno

Al final de una tarde de invierno

una mujer a escasos metros de un hombre

en una cocina a medio renovar

El día anterior, ella le había regalado partituras para duetos

«Así la próxima vez que venga a verte podremos jugar juntos »

Ya habían hecho algunos intentos

Ahora él pregunta ¿cuándo van a…?, o ¿cuándo harían?, ¿cuándo podrían?

y ella habló de todo lo que tenía que hacer

No hasta el verano, si entonces

«Te voy a echar de menos»

le dijo a un rostro implacable

pálido, sin palabras

¿Está ella, y hasta qué punto, aturdida, tocada

molesta

impresionada?

El hecho de su conexión

la capacidad o incapacidad

al final de una tarde de invierno

— Poem(s) and artwork by William Eaton.