The Why of the Wind by Laura Riding We have often considered the wind, The changing whys of the wind. Of other weather we do not so wonder. These are changes we know. Our own health is not otherwise. We wake up with a shiver, Go to bed with a fever: These are the turns by which nature persists, By which, whether ailing or well, We variably live, Such mixed we, and such variable world. It is the very rule of thriving To be thus one day, and thus the next. We do not wonder. When the cold comes we shut the window. That is winter, and we understand. Does our own blood not do the same, Now freeze, now flame within us, According to the rhythmic-fickle climates Of our lives with ourselves? But when the wind springs like a toothless hound And we are not even savaged, Only as if upbraided for we know not what And cannot answer— What is there to do, if not to understand? And this we cannot, Though when the wind is loose Our minds go gasping wind-infected To our mother hearts, Seeking in whys of blood The logic of this massacre of thought. When the wind runs we run with it. We cannot understand because we are not When the wind takes our minds. These are lapses like a hate of earth. We stand as nowhere, Blow from discontinuance to discontinuance, Then flee to what we are And accuse our sober nature Of wild desertion of itself, And ask the reason as a traitor might Beg from the king a why of treason. We must learn better What we are and are not. We are not the wind. We are not every vagrant mood that tempts Our minds to giddy homelessness. We must distinguish better Between ourselves and strangers. There is much that we are not. There is much that is not. There is much that we have not to be. We surrender to the enormous wind Against our learned littleness, But keep returning wailing ‘Why did I do this?’
