How countlessly they congregate
     O’er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
     When wintry winds do blow!—

As if with keenness for our fate,
     Out faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
     Invisible at dawn,—

And yet with neither love nor hate,
     Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva’s snow-white marble eyes
     Without the gift of sight.

I cannot but remember
  When the year grows old—
October—November—
  How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows
  Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
  With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves
  Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
  Made a melancholy sound,

She had a look about her
  That I wish I could forget—
The look of a scared thing
  Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall
  The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
  Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,
  And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
  Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember
  When the year grows old—
October—November—
  How she disliked the cold!

If you believe in snow, you have to believe
in water as it’s meant to be, loosed

from clouds arranged like asphodel. Because that’s
what it’s like to come back: a slow

surfacing, memory spiraling away. You can sleep
so long, whole seasons are forgotten

like hospital-room plaster, spidered
with cracks in Portugal shapes. You can love

sleep like water, love your heavy limbs
pushing river and ocean aside.

After Maggie woke the doctors had her stringing
bracelets of semiprecious beads, and she

couldn’t stop counting the kinds of blue.
Here, summer, in the high shade of a gingko,

she pulls up a handful of stones on silk
and we drink grapefruit seltzer, listening

to the tinny chime of bubbles
rising to the air. She can’t remember

autumn, so we tell her someday this tree will drop
its fan-shaped leaves all at once,

golden in the October crush
of every plant’s frantic strip show. Later

we’ll see mountains through the scrim of empty
branches, and if we want we can look straight up

into the atmosphere, see the same plain old sky
revolving. When we ask Maggie what color it is

she always says iolite, picturing beads
like raindrops, shining azure on the table.

She forgets that sometimes things don’t stay
where you leave them, that the sky fades

to white even before snow begins to
fall. It’s hard, but we have to tell her

even sapphires don’t glow blue
without some kind of help.

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Here we broached the Christmas barrel,
     Pushed up the charred log-ends;
Here we sang the Christmas carol,
            And called in friends.

Time has tired me since we met here
      When the folk now dead were young.
Since the viands were outset here
            And quaint songs sung.

And the worm has bored the viol
     That used to lead the tune,
Rust eaten out the dial
            That struck night’s noon.

Now no Christmas brings in neighbours,
     And the New Year comes unlit;
Where we sang the mole now labours,
            And spiders knit.

Yet at midnight if here walking,
     When the moon sheets wall and tree,
I see forms of old time talking,
            Who smile on me.

"Give me some light!" cries Hamlet's
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. "Light! Light!" cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it's dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother's childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.

With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcase increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.

By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it's darkness
we're having, let it be extravagant.

Because of the silent snow, we are all hushed
                 Into awe.
No sound of guns, nor overhead no rushed
                 Vibration to draw
Our attention out of the void wherein we are crushed.

A crow floats past on level wings
                 Noiselessly.
Uninterrupted silence swings
                 Invisibly, inaudibly 
To and fro in our misgivings.

We do not look at each other, we hide
                 Our daunted eyes.
White earth, and ruins, ourselves, and nothing beside.
                 It all belies
Our existence; we wait, and are still denied.

We are folded together, men and the snowy ground
                 Into nullity.
There is silence, only the silence, never a sound
                 Nor a verity
To assist us; disastrously silence-bound!

Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough
And gathered into barrels.
He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.
Though the branches bend like reeds,
Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree,
He that would eat of love may bear away with him
Only what his belly can hold,
Nothing in the apron,
Nothing in the pockets.
Never, never may the fruit be gathered from the bough
And harvested in barrels.
The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,
In an orchard soft with rot.

There’s Baxter, our neighbor’s harmless little dog,
before a storm door window, contented as a cat.
We’re in a row house and share a front area. One day
this summer we were headed out just as our neighbor
and his pet were coming back from a pee jaunt. Much barking
before our neighbor calmly said,
“Let them live, Baxter.”

And there’s our maple, now in winter
stark as any other tree, when only months ago
it tried to dominate the block with color
and, as far as I’m concerned, succeeded.

Now let’s bring in snow
there on limbs and branches, speaking up
as streetlights come on. Does that do
the trick? The idea is for the poem
to be as good as a pot- au- feu, where, to my taste,
after all those cuts of meat, plus marrow bones,
plus vegetables pulled from the earth,
the trick is done by cloves.

If a mouse makes a nest
Of one's written words,
Is there else to do but accept
The flattery?
I have deemed it wise to do so.
I have thanked him
Sufficiently
As he scurried in and out
Of the room.
He has faced wither
With a nest of my words.
I did not suspect them
Of such worth against the cold.

A Tuesday, day of Tiw,
god of war, dawns in darkness.
The short holiday day of talking by the fire,
floating on snowshoes among
ancient self-pollarded maples,
visiting, being visited, giving
a rain gauge, receiving red socks,
watching snow buntings nearly over
their heads in snow stab at spirtled bits
of sunflower seeds the chickadees
hold with their feet to a bough
and hack apart, scattering debris
like sloppy butchers, is over.
Irregular life begins. Telephone calls,
Google searches, evasive letters,
complicated arrangements, faxes,
second thoughts, consultations,
e-mails, solemnly given kisses.

A Tuesday, day of Tiw,
god of war, dawns in darkness.
The short holiday day of talking by the fire,
floating on snowshoes among
ancient self-pollarded maples,
visiting, being visited, giving
a rain gauge, receiving red socks,
watching snow buntings nearly over
their heads in snow stab at spirtled bits
of sunflower seeds the chickadees
hold with their feet to a bough
and hack apart, scattering debris
like sloppy butchers, is over.
Irregular life begins. Telephone calls,
Google searches, evasive letters,
complicated arrangements, faxes,
second thoughts, consultations,
e-mails, solemnly given kisses.

A Tuesday, day of Tiw,
god of war, dawns in darkness.
The short holiday day of talking by the fire,
floating on snowshoes among
ancient self-pollarded maples,
visiting, being visited, giving
a rain gauge, receiving red socks,
watching snow buntings nearly over
their heads in snow stab at spirtled bits
of sunflower seeds the chickadees
hold with their feet to a bough
and hack apart, scattering debris
like sloppy butchers, is over.
Irregular life begins. Telephone calls,
Google searches, evasive letters,
complicated arrangements, faxes,
second thoughts, consultations,
e-mails, solemnly given kisses.

There’s Baxter, our neighbor’s harmless little dog,
before a storm door window, contented as a cat.
We’re in a row house and share a front area. One day
this summer we were headed out just as our neighbor
and his pet were coming back from a pee jaunt. Much barking
before our neighbor calmly said,
“Let them live, Baxter.”

And there’s our maple, now in winter
stark as any other tree, when only months ago
it tried to dominate the block with color
and, as far as I’m concerned, succeeded.

Now let’s bring in snow
there on limbs and branches, speaking up
as streetlights come on. Does that do
the trick? The idea is for the poem
to be as good as a pot- au- feu, where, to my taste,
after all those cuts of meat, plus marrow bones,
plus vegetables pulled from the earth,
the trick is done by cloves.

Let there be a ban on every holiday.

        No ringing in the new year.

No fireworks doodling the warm night air.

        No holly on the door. I say

let there be no more.

        For many are not here who were here before.

We shall have our little day.
Take my hand and travel still
Round and round the little way,
Up and down the little hill.

It is good to love again;
Scan the renovated skies,
Dip and drive the idling pen,
Sweetly tint the paling lies.

Trace the dripping, piercèd heart,
Speak the fair, insistent verse,
Vow to God, and slip apart,
Little better, little worse.

Would we need not know before
How shall end this prettiness;
One of us must love the more,
One of us shall love the less.

Thus it is, and so it goes;
We shall have our day, my dear.
Where, unwilling, dies the rose
Buds the new, another year.