March-Wind

All night the March wind blows about our windows

And chases whispers through my dreaming head;

Dry voices sift and fall in ash and cinders,

In acrid conversation with the dead,

whose ghosts go round in circles down from heaven,

whose ghosts go round in circles up from Hell,

Whose pace, within the strictest measure even,

Breaks in the drill and rhythm of a bell…

Were I to wake alone I would be weeping

With shiftless sorrow, restless, rootless dread.

Instead I wake to warmth, to find you sleeping,

My living comfort, burrowed in our bed.

You reach across and still the drilling bell

And stretch and yawn and kiss me.  All is well.