Cold Spring Harbour

From feather-stuffed bolsters of cloud

falling on casual linen

the small shrieks soundlessly float.

The woods are lint-wreathed. Dawn

crackles like foil to the rake

of a field mouse nibbling, nibbling

its icing. The world is unwrapped

in cotton and you would tread wool

if you opened, quietly, whitely,

this door, like an old Christmas card

turned by a child’s dark hand, did

he know it was dark then,

the magical brittle branches, the white house

collared in fur, the white world of men,

its bleeding gules and its berry drops?

Two prancing, immobile white ponies

no bigger than mice pulled a carriage

across soundless hillocks of cotton;

bells hasped to their necks didn’t tinkle

though you begged God to touch them to life,

some white-haired old God who’d forgotten

or no longer trusted his miracles.

What urges you now towards this white,

snow-whipped woods is not memory

of that dark child’s toys, not the card

of a season, forever foreign, that went

over its ridges like a silent

sleigh. That was a child’s sorrow, this is

child’s play, through which you cannot go,

dumbstruck at an open door,

stunned, fearing the strange violation

(because you are missing your children)

of perfect snow.