Below, you’ll find the full poem ‘The Buck in the Snow’ by Edna St Vincent Millay. It explains death’s ability to cross all boundaries and cause loss even in the most tranquil of times
The Buck in the Snow
White sky, over the hemlocks bowed with snow,
Saw you not at the beginning of evening the antlered buck and his doe
Standing in the apple orchard? I saw them, I saw them suddenly go,
Tails up, with long leaps lovely and slow,
Over the stone wall into the wood of hemlocks bowed with snow.
Now lies he here, his wild blood scalding the snow.
How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers
The buck in the snow.
How strange a thing, a mile away by now, it may be,
Under the heavy hemlocks, that as the moments pass,
Shift their loads a little, letting fall a feather of snow –
Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.
Edna St Vincent Millay
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