Child of my winter, born When the new fallen soldiers froze In Asia's steep ravines and fouled the snows, When I was torn

By love I could not still, By fear that silenced my cramped mind To that cold war where, lost, I could not find My peace in my will,

All those days we could keep Your mind a landscape of new snow Where the chilled tenant-farmer finds, below, His fields asleep

In their smooth covering, white As quilts to warm the resting bed Of birth or pain, spotless as paper spread For me to write,

And thinks: Here lies my land Unmarked by agony, the lean foot Of the weasel tracking, the thick trapper's boot; And I have planned

My chances to restrain The torments of demented summer or Increase the deepening harvest here before It snows again.

Note: Also take a look at Snodgrass's brief talk on how poems (including this one) in his first book, "Heart's Needle" (credited for making "confessional" poetry legit after being declared illegal by the T.S. Eliot cabal) got made