Hibernal

Babette Deutsch

The park is winter-plucked. The sky
and the grey pavement show a sheeted face:
the covered stare of one who had to die.
Now, when men sweat,
shoveling muddy snow or heaving ice,
they know the helpless sweat that will not wet them twice,
they know the staggering heart, the smothered breath
that stand between this knowing and the end.
Though they must drag a net of heavy hours
about their straining limbs,
though they behold
love like a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire—
this net will break before they tire,
this cloud, this flame will vanish and be cold.
Men think of this who limp against the wind
that freezes hate and sucks at their desire.
Winter is on us now, and will return:
soiled snows will choke the city streets again,
bleak twilights dull the windows as before,
dark hurrying crowds push towards lit rooms in vain.
One day we shall not kiss or quarrel any more.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on January 5, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

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about this poem

“Hibernal” appears in Honey out of the Rock (B. Appleton, 1925), Babette Deutsch’s second poetry collection. In 1926, The Sewanee Review published professor of English and writer Sidney L. Cox’s reviews of several new poetry collections, including Honey out of the Rock. Cox wrote, “Babette Deutsch’s Honey out of the Rock is here and there slightly influenced by the intellectual and aesthetic straining of the metropolis. The writer is evidently strong in passion and maternal affection, sensible of luscious, heavy beauty as well as bright, clear beauty, and intelligent enough for generous irony. And she has things of her own to say about love and marriage and work and death. Her book is dignified and firm and fraught with charm of a reticent and austere sort.”

academy chancellors

Babette Deutsch’s poem “Hibernal” is featured in today’s Poem-a-Day as part of a weekend series, highlighting the artistic contributions of former Academy Chancellors. The Academy’s Board of Chancellors is composed of esteemed poets who serve as artistic advisors to the Academy and ambassadors of poetry to the United States at large, select the recipients of major Academy prizes and fellowships, and champion the the organization’s programs for poets and readers.

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