What Shall I Say of You?

For Robert Frost

What shall I say of you, my window-tree,

You have not said before, and better at that?

Only that I've watched your silhouette

Against the night and the Cartwright house next door

Gently decide; that I have seen you freeze

Patiently and breathing deep withdraw

Inside the hieroglyph and metaphor

Of your tough skeleton, and standing still

In glare ice still outlast

The last leaf and the grass,

Emerson and Whitman, winter's worst,

And rise your own green justification

With multitudinous tongue serenely talking

Whether or not we catch your drift until,

Like the blind man's, our eyelids lift

On men as trees, but walking.