Hoping to comfort a friend or, perhaps, the reader, "Lines for Winter" begins with a bit of advice. "Tell yourself/ as it gets cold and gray falls from the air,/ that you will go on/ walking, hearing/ the same tune no matter where/ you find yourself." The command is firm and his images are unadorned, yet the poem's structure adds drama to these lines. The phrase "go on," for example, connects grammatically to "walking" and "hearing," but, alone at the end of a line, it also suggests the more urgent idea of holding onto life. Likewise, the clause "you find yourself" has a specific meaning within its sentence; isolated on its own line, it takes on new life as an even stronger piece of advice: this is the path to self-discovery.
Concluding this first section, the speaker provides two stark possibilities for where "you" might end up: "inside the dome of dark/ or under the cracking white/ of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow." Despite the soft alliterative "D" sounds, the first image and the personification of the moon, and the internal off-rhyme ("dome / snow") that brings a sense of closure, both images suggest a cold, empty future.
The second section of the poem—its second sentence—starts, "Tonight as it gets cold/ tell yourself." This variation of the opening builds drama by being more specific with time—now you know exactly when it will become cold and life will end: tonight. An artful line break adds tension to the next two lines, where a bleak idea, "what you know which is nothing" turns into a more optimistic suggestion: "but the tune your bones play/ as you keep going." This is the second time the speaker has used the word "tune." First, it was simply a tune to be heard; now it is the music that comes from inside a person, the unique song that defines each of us. Knowing your tune, the poem promises, "you will be able for once to lie down under the small fire/ of winter stars." This is a somber hope, for small fires offer little warmth, yet the phrase "for once" gives the sense that a restless soul might finally find peace.
The poem's third and shortest section begins with a moment of uncertainty. The "if" in the lines, "And if it happens that you cannot/ go on or turn back," tells the reader that eventually you may, no matter what, have to face the cold. This time, the cold is not part of the setting, but "that final flowing of cold through your limbs." This striking image, this powerful reminder that there will be an end, is balanced by the third and final imperative: "tell yourself/ …that you love what you are."
The poem suggests that even a self that struggles to walk or hear (section 1) or even know (section 2) can still love. But is this a truth or just a comforting thing to "tell yourself" in your final moments? The poem can be read both ways, but certainly in love there is comfort, in love there is warmth, and in the self-love the speaker wishes for someone about to die, there seems to be the hope of peace.
Read a biography of the poet Mark Strand at the Poetry Foundation.