Poem: The Little Ice Age

Europe shivered for centuries in the Little Ice Age.

Rivers froze; crops failed;

people chewed on pine bark, begged             

the stubborn heavens for mercy;                                  

people starved.                                                                        

That’s why the Stradivarius cries so convincingly.

It’s the wood remembering,

the stunned wood shuddering,

too numb to grow,

the tree rings huddled close against the cold.

First published in Field.

Chana Bloch is the author of five books of poems, most recently “Swimming in the Rain: New & Selected Poems, 1980-2015” (Pittsburgh: Autumn House Press, 2015). She is co-translator of the biblical “Song of Songs” and Israeli poets Yehuda Amichai and Dahlia Ravikovitch.