Just Because: 'March Evening'

M.C. Escher

This poem is by Massachusetts poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925). Of herself and her talents, Lowell allegedly said, "God made me a businesswoman, and I made myself a poet." Together with Ezra Pound and others, she was a founder of the imagist movement in poetry, which broke from the poetry before it by focusing more on simple and straightforward description than on long philosophical musings. Over her lifetime, she wrote and published more than 650 poems. A collection of her work that was published posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.


Blue through the window burns the twilight;
   Heavy, through trees, blows the warm south wind.
Glistening, against the chill, gray sky light,
   Wet, black branches are barred and entwined.

Sodden and spongy, the scarce-green grass plot
   Dents into pools where a foot has been.
Puddles lie spilt in the road a mass, not
   Of water, but steel, with its cold, hard sheen.

Faint fades the fire on the hearth, its embers
   Scattering wide at a stronger gust.
Above, the old weathercock groans, but remembers
   Creaking, to turn, in its centuried rust.

Dying, forlorn, in dreary sorrow,
   Wrapping the mists round her withering form,
Day sinks down; and in darkness to-morrow
   Travails to birth in the womb of the storm.