Suggested that, night-deep, the snow had fallen;
Rising, I peered through the curtains half-drawn
At the morning gloom like a bruise blue-swollen.
The
air was frigid round my pyjama’d legs,
The window glass wore a cataract of frost;Outside, the garden’s winter stubs and pegs
Were mounded with snow beneath an icy crust.
And
no bird sang, no cat or fox prowled,
Only
the snowflakes jettisoned down,A struck silence in which my breathing toiled
Knit gloom and snow in a veil on the town.
Chastened,
shivering, I went back to my bed
Sunk in the darkness of the night-musted
room;A crow croaked once and a hiss of wind said,
“This snow is your pall, that bed your tomb.”
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©
February 2015