No News from the Old Country

I

Well, how do they look, the hills of Vermont,
now that you're back? Smaller? And closer the house?
In thirty years it isn't the weather that's changed them,
but you, contracting the past by turning away.

Restore it now. England's dependable winters
were never enough, but there, watching the hills
repeat their promise of danger, you're home
on original ground. Let it build back -

fresh shadows have pressed across your room,
and further, the forest you never explored
has flooded new valleys. O let it build back,
not as explicable, thin enchantment,

but as a place in extremity: all its rivers
and broken roads defining a wilderness
where you relearn your love of chances,
and, as I write, even by pushing out
...