“Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.”
—Pascal, Pensées
Five degrees. Rough, shifting winds. Sunlight crashing
Almost audibly, sky to snow-pack, snow-pack to sky.
Eyes shrink hard to their smallest stop, but winter drills in.
Brilliant splinters of ice in the air blow up and down.
In a polished field stiff weeds poke through like rusty wire.
Stems and branches, anchored in ice, shake hard with gusts,
Knock stalk on stalk and litter the snow with broken reeds.
Detritus lifts in a whirl of air, then lies back down.
Hollow weeds rattle bone on bone, and the man who listens
Slowly turns to scan the rim of an icy zero. Acres of snow
Reach every way. Sunlight fills the blinding page.
He has come out here to read what it says, and he thinks he knows.
He walks back home and remembers everything;
Everything holds in his icy mirror. When words arrive
He chooses those which fabricate nothing, take nothing away.
I read the words on the snowy page, and they stick like burrs.
They name the terror and make it flower. We stand together.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
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If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
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