If, in the Foggy Aleutians by Edna St. Vincent Millay
It’s my birthday, so I’m going to post an ESVM poem. (That makes perfect sense to me, at least!) This was not published in any of her poetry collections during her lifetime, but it’s in her Collected Poems.
If, in the Foggy Aleutians
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
Not ever, now, any more, upon this mildewed planet
Shines the sweet, wholesome sun: we live in fog.
Our leaves grow large and green, but we bear no blossom;
No coloured hope unfolds, no poem speaks out
In Dutch, Korean, English or Tagalog.
Yet, if, in the foggy Aleutians, if on the misty
Island of Kiska, island of Attu, any
Flower, however weak and bleak, appears
In spring, between the cloudy craters, why then, although
It should take us a thousand years,
We can stare into the fog until it shines, we can force it to unfold us.
We must ask the men who have been there; they will know.
