In the Time of the Great Wind

Tonight the wind blows as it would blow down

The last tree, the last house, the last man;

Tonight the Allies leave Norway writhing

Like a cut worm under a boot stamped down.

All night planes in their scores keep laboring

From the new airport half a mile away,

And my heart labors with them, and the wind

Keeps blowing, blowing; this is the second day.

Now all the world grows insubstantial;

Only the wind exists, and it is steel

Scraping the world, and all not rooted well

Follows like old newspaper, comes to heel.

What will remain when it has blown its fill?

Not bread, nor wine, nor children's sticky hands,

Nothing, unless the hapless heart can wring

From wind, on wind, through wind its wayfaring,