Boy in Ice

O river, green and still,

By frost and memory stayed,

Your dumb and stiffened glass divides

A shadow and a shade.

In air, the shadow’s face

My winter gaze lets fall

To see beneath the stream’s bright bars

That other shade in thrall.

A boy, time-fixed in ice,

His cheeks with summer dyed,

His mouth, a rose-devouring rose,

His bird-throat petrified.

O fabulous and lost,

More distant to me now

Than rock-drawn mammoth, painted stag

Or tigers in the snow.

You stare into my face

Dead as ten thousand years,

Your sparrow tongue sealed in my mouth

Your world about my ears.

And till our shadows meet,

Till time burns through the ice,

Thus frozen shall we ever stay

Locked in this paradise.