Poem Response 4

 Pieter Brueghel, Hunters in the Snow (1565)

"Winter Landscape"

by: John Berryman 

The three men coming down the winter hill
In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds
At heel, through the arrangement of the trees,
Past the five figures at the burning straw,
Returning cold and silent to their town,

Returning to the drifted snow, the rink
Lively with children, to the older men,
The long companions they can never reach,
The blue light, men with ladders, by the church
The sledge and shadow in the twilit street,

Are not aware that in the sandy time
To come, the evil waste of history
Outstretched, they will be seen upon the brow
Of that same hill: when all their company
Will have been irrecoverably lost,

These men, this particular three in brown
Witnessed by birds will keep the scene and say
By their configuration with the trees,
The small bridge, the red houses and the fire,
What place, what time, what morning occasion

Sent them into the wood, a pack of hounds
At heel and the tall poles upon their shoulders,
Thence to return as now we see them and
Ankle-deep in snow down the winter hill
Descend, while three birds watch and the fourth flies.
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"Winter Landscape" caught my attention, because I thought it was Berryman's poetic description of Pieter Brueghel's painting Hunter's in the Snow, but it is much more than that. In the first and second stanza of his poem, "Winter Landscape" describes in great detail the scene of occurring in the  painting. His diction almost seems sad in some lines as if he himself were there at the time of the painting and is remembering it through his own nostalgia. This can be seen in the last line of stanza one, "Returning cold and silent to their town" and in stanza two "The long companions they can never reach". Even the color "blue" in stanza two gives this feeling. Based on the first two stanza's Berryman's poem is just a reflection mixed with some of his own memory, inspired by Brueghel's painting.

However, the next three stanza's of Berryman's poem completely change the direction I thought the poem would be taking, while still holding to the first two stanza's tone. Suddenly, the sadness hinted at in the first two stanza's is not Berryman's general feeling of nostalgia, but a set up of tone for the rest of the poem. Switching abruptly from a description of  Brueghel's painting to a statement on history and humankind Berryman begins his true purpose in writing this poem. The message being that time slips by quickly like sand through someone's fingers, leaving only physical manifestations of memory. like the painting, for the next generation to speculate on. I choose to believe the men in the painting are supposed to be considered lucky not to know what is to come.