Slowly, without sun, the day sinks toward the close of December. It is minus sixty degrees. Over the sleeping houses a dense fog rises—smoke from banked fires, and the snowy breath of an abyss through which the cold town is perceptibly falling. As if Death were a voice made visible, with the power of illumination … Now, in the white shadow of those streets, ghostly newsboys make their rounds, delivering to the homes of those who have died of the frost word of the resurrection of Silence.
Excerpted from The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer: Collected Poems, copyright © 1993 by John Haines. Used with permission of Graywolf Press.