dickerson, robert, 22 january 2012
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.
dickerson, robert, 21 january 2012
What radiance! Were those sea-borne
dolphins crowding the bow,
the sun just peeping up?
or mist-drawn rainbow?
Sigma, alpha, pi, ego
phee, omega, greeted,
arms akimbo,
the smiling lith on the beach.
At dawn we quit ship,
skipped town altogether, drove
to the far side of the isle
there being 'way too many people in port.