The Violence of Nature

Throughout his career, Ted Hughes was known for writing poems that emphasized the violence of the natural world. "Wind" definitely doesn't have the graphic violence of some of them, but it does take a look at something that seems pretty destructive: the untamed wind. Violence, in Hughes's vision, is just a part of Nature. In this poem, it's sort of a vital force, participating in some sort of cosmic process that doesn't particularly care about the little lives of humans and animals. Even though this violence is, by the very definition of "violence," destructive, it also provokes a miraculous reaction from the natural world—like when it (figuratively) makes the hills change places, or when it causes the stones to cry out at the end of the poem:

We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.
(21-24)

For more examples, check out Hughes's poems "Big Poppy" and "The Jaguar." As fellow Brit Paul McCartney once said, "There's a fine line between chaos and creation."