The Windyard
I built a windyard for the wind;
The wind like a wild vast dog came up
To play with the weathervanes and corners
My keyholes and my chinks.
And for the sea I built a well;
The brookish tomcat gurgled in,
Waterfell and sprung about
Hunting throats and boots.
I stood a house up for the earth;
The mappy girl came in
With rut and footstep path
That wind the traveler up.
A stove I hammered for the sun;
In flew the golden oriole
To crackle the sticks of time
And sing the loaves of space.
Come girl well yard and stove,
Come Flesh Heart Mind and Lyre,
Come Earth Water Wind and Fire.
Well, when they came
Barking, meowing, talking and caroling,
I stepped above both house and yard
Into myself.
James Reaney, 1956
“The Windyard” is from The Essential James Reaney and available from The Porcupine’s Quill. The poem also appears in Poems by James Reaney, New Press, 1972.
James Reaney’s emblem poems:
In his recent book The Emblems of James Reaney, Thomas Gerry notes the connection between “The Windyard” and a later emblem poem “Windlady” from 1970:
“‘Windlady’ magnetically attracts two in particular of Reaney’s other works: the 1956 poem ‘Windyard’ and the play Listen to the Wind, first performed in 1966.” − Thomas Gerry in The Emblems of James Reaney, page 130, The Porcupine’s Quill, 2013.
