Poetry

Up draws the blind. From remotest heaven
out of a perlmutter sky
falls the pure, the Brownian, upward-drifting snow
casually in high-blown whorls;
on the rail has settled a bluish inch.
It's cold', croaks the bird, on yellow, thin legs,

but I rise. Snow fills last years' garden, sifts
on sticks and galls and nodes of last years'
pride, the dormant window boxes;
outside you can hear it seethe;
it shivers, that bush
that stays green all the winter.

A day. To pass. A day to pass
till sleeping time again and blinded once more,
to sleep between footboard and bedstead; only snow--
penniless, homeless, less all those things
the fellow in the Citroen specified needing
hurtling down the Rhine, years ago;--breeding

melancholy accumulations,
detestable, sweet,
difficult to translate. There is nothing to do but go on--
Chaos death is, I heard, and frankly I'm not ready:
so many winters in one guesses it's all good,
the season, the falling snow, the sleep.