The still mind of winter

Very unlike the mild winter we are having here in Ireland, but a mind that is perfect for meditation

One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time to behold the junipers shagged with ice, the spruces rough in the distant glitter of the January sun;

and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land

full of the same wind that is blowing in the same bare place
for the listener, who listens in the snow, 

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

Wallace Stevens

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